OER

Earlier this month, Cengage and Learning Objects—a Cengage business unit—announced the launch of OpenNow, “a suite of digital products for general education courses with open educational resources (OER) content.” Responses to media coverage of this new offering focused mainly on the business model, the adherence to the “5 Rs” of OER and the contributions of materials from Cengage back to the OER community. While these reactions are to be expected, they reminded me that “open” is much more than OER content and its associated implementation and business models. An open approach to education and learning also encompasses Read More…

Cheryl Costantini is the Vice President of Content Strategy at Cengage. She’s been in the higher education industry for more than 20 years and is passionate about improving access to education and helping learners achieve success. Recently, Cengage announced that we’ve launched OpenNow digital course solutions that make it easy to work with and use open educational resources (OER). You might be asking yourself: Why would Cengage develop OER-based solutions? It’s quite simple: OER adds value to the learning experience. OER provides unique benefits. Aside from the five R’s (retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute), OER belongs to everyone, and it can change the nature of Read More…

Affordability is an initiative higher education is confronting, spanning a host of areas including tuition and fees, and also, course materials. Supporting student retention, cost reduction and overall value is a strong focus at Cengage, says Cengage VP of Content Strategy, Cheryl Costantini, who hosted a panel discussion called “The Journey to OER.” It’s a strong focus for institutions, too. In our webinar, “The Journey to OER: A Panel Discussion,” learn what three experienced higher education professionals are saying about how schools can use resources effectively, one open textbook author’s insights on the OER market, and more.

How

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A Learner-Centric Approach to Retention
Download this webinar to discover what drives retention, why it’s often under-resourced, and how institutions can overcome these challenges. Legislation to Increase OER Usage
Find out how a new bill proposed by the House Higher Education Committee in Washington state proposes to expand the potential of OER. Workforce Training to Close Skills Gap
Increasing skills requirements for middle-skill jobs has created a workforce gap that must be addressed. How can skills-training partnerships reduce this gap? Collaborate with Instructional Designers
What would it be like to work with an instructional design team? This Read More…

So you’re interested in Open Educational Resources (OER). Who isn’t these days, given the desire to make education more affordable for students? Affordability is certainly a hot topic in education. Though, you may be interested in OER for completely different reasons. You may be seeking OER to supplement your course with new materials, more closely reflect current events or to curate a unique course experience for your students.

Questions About OER

Whatever brings you to OER, the more you dig in, the more questions you’ll likely have:

What is OER?
How are faculty integrating OER into courses?
Are OER materials accurate?
Are OER materials

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I attended OpenEd for the first time in 2008. I dug up some notes from the event and rediscovered an observation by Yoshimi Fukuhara of Keio University. He asserted that Open Courseware (now generally referred to as Open Educational Resources or OER) is often too focused on content and not enough of learning design and the learning experience.

OER: Content vs. Design

While openness for its own sake has practical and philosophical value, there is broad consensus that content in an educational context (be it open or otherwise) is only as valuable as the outcomes it contributes to. The Read More…

Guest Contributor: Jonathan Mott, Chief Learning Officer
Learning Objects, A Cengage Company When we set about improving learning, we generally begin with some notion of what we want to be better or different for our students. If our focus is on student achievement, we might invest more in instruction, technology, or materials designed to yield better outcomes. Alternatively, if our primary objective is to lower cost, we might look at ways to reduce institutional investments in a program or we might directly reduce student expenditures by replacing current materials with lower-cost alternatives or OER (free and openly licensed educational Read More…

Guest Contributor: Cheryl Costantini, VP of Content Strategy, Cengage About a month ago, the EdTechWomen organization in San Francisco asked if I was interested in being a panelist for a discussion on Open Educational Resources. I gladly accepted the opportunity; a chance to talk about my perspectives on OER, what they mean for education, and how they can help students is something I love to talk about.

A panel of pioneers

The event was hosted at the Udemy office. Two of my colleagues, Shuning Yan and Yuxi Liu are members of the group, and several other colleagues came to the discussion. The title Read More…