OpenBLC

Online registration for the faculty workshops is now open using the links below:

 

Tuesday, April 27 - 10:00 - 11:30 A.M.
Wednesday, May 19 - 1:00 - 2:30 P.M.

 

The BLC is committed to advancing open educational resources and practices. In recent years, the BLC has supported a range of programs, workshops, and webinars for our members to explore open educational resources (OER), including:

The BLC has been a consortial member of the Open Education Network (OEN, formerly the Open Textbook Network) since 2016. The BLC’s OER Community of Interest (COI) focuses upon supporting and expanding the use of OER to increase access to teaching and learning resources and reduce the expenditure burden on students. The COI continues to provide a forum for sharing ideas and strategies on increasing adoption of OER and has regularly hosted professional development opportunities for BLC members. Elsewhere, the BLC has maintained consistent support for Open Access Week, and supported attendance from member librarians at OEN Summer Institutes and Summits. The BLC is also a member of the Open Content Alliance, and our members have collectively contributed more than 85,000 digital items to the Internet Archive since 2007.

This past summer, the BLC hosted a workshop entitled ‘Supporting OER on Your Campus in the COVID-19 Era,’ attended by more than 60 library and instructional staff who support faculty in adopting open texts across 15 BLC libraries.

In October 2020, the BLC announced the launch of the OpenBLC pilot initiative to support faculty adoption of OER across the 19 member libraries, supported by a generous grant from the Davis Educational Foundation.

During the 2020-2021 academic year, the OER Community of Interest will lead a core group of librarians and staff from the member libraries in designing a workshop series for faculty to increase their understanding and awareness of open textbooks. The Presidential Grant from the Davis Educational Foundation will fund $200 stipends for up to 50 faculty members who attend a workshop and review an open text in the Open Textbook Library, a collection of 800 freely available electronic textbooks supported by the OEN.

Leveraging the OEN Data Dashboard, the OEN Community, and promising practices in open pedagogy, BLC staff will partner with the Co-Chairs of the OER Community of Interest to assess whether the provision of stipends increases adoption of open textbooks, generates savings for students, and catalyzes collaborative authorship of open content.

Open Education Network Resources

The Open Education Network makes available a range of resources to support open education programs here.