iterating toward openness

This is another post in my series of posts showing gratitude and appreciation for members of the open education community.

Today I’m going to focus on the Open Textbook Network. From their website:

The Open Textbook Network (OTN) helps higher education institutions and systems advance the use of open textbooks and practices on their campuses. We maintain the Open Textbook Library, the premiere resource for peer-reviewed academic textbooks. All of our textbooks are free, openly licensed, and complete; their adoption creates a measurable, positive impact on student success. With our members, we move the open education conversation forward on local and national levels.

OTN is a membership organization. They estimate that OER adoptions on their 600 member campuses have saved students over $8.5 million dollars. Much of this savings is attributable to the workshops their incredible team of presenters offer. 45% of faculty who attend one of these workshops adopt OER for their course. OTN invests significant effort in facilitating peer reviews of the textbooks in their collection. These reviews are openly published on their website and licensed CC BY, which enables them to be used in a range of applications. Their Adaptable OER Publishing Agreement is a model agreement for institutions that want to contract with their faculty to create OER. Their Authoring Open Textbooks Guide includes a checklist for getting started, publishing program case studies, textbook organization and elements, writing resources and an overview of useful tools. Their Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know is a five-step guide for faculty (and those who support faculty) who want to modify an open textbook. They run a Summer Institute and Summit each year.

For all these reasons and more, I’m grateful for the Open Textbook Network and all the wonderful things they do for the open education community. Share some love forOpen Textbook Network in the comments below.

This is another post in my series of posts showing gratitude and appreciation for members of the open education community.

Today I’m going to focus on ISKME and OER Commons. From their website:

ISKME’s OER initiatives aim to grow a sustainable culture of sharing and continuous improvement among educators at all levels. In 2007, ISKME launched OER Commons, its digital public library and collaboration platform, informed by the organization’s pioneering efforts in knowledge management and educational innovation. OER Commons offers a comprehensive infrastructure for curriculum experts and instructors at all levels to identify high-quality OER and collaborate around their adaptation, evaluation, and use to address the needs of teachers and learners.

In addition to their widely used OER search and discovery service, ISKME provides a range of other services. Hubs are customizable, branded resource centers on the OER Commons site where a network of users can create and share collections, administer groups, and share news and events associated with a project or organization. Microsites are ISKME’s comprehensive solution for hosting and indexing a unique content library while facilitating collaboration for a specific targeted audience. ISKME’s integration services include integrations with learning management systems, Clever, Google Classroom, and other systems. They conduct a wide range of training workshops, on topics like Introduction to OER Practices and OER Discovery and Curation. They also run the Big Ideas Fest each year. For all these reasons and more, I’m grateful for ISKME and all the wonderful things they do for the open education community. Share some love for ISKME in the comments below.