Blogs and Opinion
2 United States
Access
The tyranny of unintended consequences: Richard Poynder on open access and the open access movement – November 25, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Can geowalling save open access? – November 14, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
When is open too open? – Piracy in education and rethinking test banks – May 17, 2019 (CCCOER, Liz Yates)
Access codes/assessment platforms
Also see General and Inclusive Access.
‘Paying to do your homework is just ridiculous’ The local and national fight for affordable textbooks – May 16, 2019 (The Daily, Claudia Yaw)
The need for an open assessment platform in higher education – October 29, 2018 (Medium, Robert Bodily)
Accessibility
Also see UDL
Equity, Inclusiveness, and Zero Embargo Public Access – October 4, 2022 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
OER for music textbooks: Alt text best practice – March 2021 (CCCOER)
Improving the digital accessibility of OER: A reflective guide – June 11, 2020 (Open Oregon)
Community college conversations about access, equity and quality in distance ed – Novembewr 30, 2019 (Phil on EdTech)
Can a health-insurance model bring ‘equitable access’ to the textbook market? – June 18, 2019 (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Adoption
Recognizing and overcoming obstacles: What it will take to realize the potential of OER – July 12, 2021 (Educause)
Going all in on OER – March 17, 2021 (Faculty Focus)
Reducing friction in OER adoption – February 10, 2020 (iterating toward openness)
OER survey and adoption growth: It pays to check source material – January 20, 2019 (e-Literate)
OER awareness and adoption on the rise – January 9, 2019 (Nicole Allen)
Advocacy
It’s a long game after all – August 21, 2019 (iterating toward openness)
AI and open education
Booksellers/bookstores
6 Problems with OER access in campus bookstores – June 24, 2021 (Campus Technology)
Why a professor buys his books from the bookstore – August 20, 2019 (Another fine mess)
Affordable textbooks and independent college stores – May 10, 2019 (Open Oregon)
A Barnes & Noble experience – December 10, 2018 (Open Oregon)
Conferences
2019 Cascadia Open Education Summit Summary – May 10, 2019 (CCCOER, Dale Coleman)
Copyright
Global resilient OER: Building open resources that cross legal boundaries with the Code of Best Practice in Fair Use for OER – July 1, 2021 (OER & Beyond)
Our Response To Canada’s Copyright Term Extension Consultation – March 9, 2021 (Creative Commons blog)
Copyright limits and learning: Lessons from the COVID-19 quarantine – November 23, 2020 (Info Justice)
Public statement of library copyright specialists: Fair use & emergency remote teaching & research – March 13, 2020
Rights reversion success story: Dale Cannon – March 27, 2018 (Authors Alliance News)
Colleges shouldn’t have to deal with copyright monitoring – May 17, 2016 (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Courses/syllabi
Reclaiming and reinventing courseware series (eLiterate)
- A next-generation open source courseware platform collaboration – November 30, 2020
- A courseware platform for expressing pedagogical intent – January 7, 2021
- There’s a layer in between learning content and learning analytics – February 2, 2021
How much traction do open access/open educational resources have in the classroom? – October 6, 2020 (Open Syllabus Explorer)
Creative Commons/Creative Commons licences
Also see Publishers/publishing.
Flickr to copyleft trolls: drop dead – April 1, 2023 (Cory Doctorow)
Do not feed the trolls – February 8, 2022 (Creative Commons)
Creative Commons in Court – October 14, 2020 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Copyright, Creative Commons, and confusion – April 20, 2020 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Thoughts on “non-amicable” enforcement of CC licenses – January 15, 2020 (Creative Commons)
Message to the Creative Commons community regarding Joi Ito – September 10, 2019 (Creative Commons)
Joi Ito, director of MIT Media Lab, resigns over ties to Jeffrey Epstein – September 7, 2019 (MIT Technology Review)
Questioning the OER orthodoxy: Is the commons the right metaphor for our work with OER? – November 13, 2018 (David Wiley)
Three things you may misunderstand about the Creative Commons licenses – October 24, 2018 (David Wiley)
Advocating for CC BY – December 13, 2016 (iterating toward openness)
Defending noncommercial uses: Great Minds v Fedex Office – August 30, 2016 (Creative Commons)
Debt
How paying for college is changing middle-class life -Aug 30, 2019 (NY Times)
Changing the things I cannot accept – June 25, 2019 (Medium)
Visualizations of Program-Level College Scorecard Data on Student Debt – June 4, 2019 (Phil on EdTech)
Small dollar amounts are significant – March 15, 2019 (Open Oregon)
How open education relates to socioeconomics – October 29, 2018 (The NYU Dispatch)
Efficacy and student outcomes
Students favored OERs and would enroll in OER courses again – February 8, 2021 (UMBC blog)
Open educational resources: What we don’t know – November 14, 2018 (Inside Higher Ed)
Assessing the impact of open educational resources – January 4, 2018 (Teaching in Higher Ed, podcast)
Equity, diversity, inclusion (EDI)
Introducing Two New Toolkits to Advance Inclusion in Scholarly Communication: Part 1 – February 8, 2023 (The Scholary Kitchen)
Let’s support college student mothers during the pandemic — and beyond – August 2, 2021 (EdSurge)
How open education enables culturally responsive teaching – June 16, 2021 (Faculty Focus)
OpenStax making diversity updates – March 26, 2021 (Campus Technology)
Our approach to systemic racism in Open Education – November 10, 2020 (Hewlett Foundation)
Practitioner perspectives: OER and a call for equity – July 6, 2020 (New England Board of Higher Education Journal)
Can open educational resources foster equity in higher education? – January 28, 2020 (LMS Pulse)
Our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in OpenStax textbooks – August 29, 2019 (OpenStax Blog)
Leveraging open educational resources for queer students – June 24, 2019 (New America)
Could open educational resources help queer students? – October 22, 2018 (New America)
General
Changed, changed utterly – June 5, 2020 (Inside Higher Ed)
Comments on the US DoEd proposed rule – Open Textbook Pilot Program – April 23, 2020 (iterating toward openness)
Subscribe to open: A mutual assurance approach to open access – March 9, 2020 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
American history textbooks can differ across the country, in ways that are shaded by partisan politics – January 12, 2020 (The New York Times)
Some thoughts about OER research – November 12, 2019 and An OpenEd conference update – October 30, 2019 (iterating toward openness)
Cacophony: Open ed, digital pedagogy lab, and the challenge of education conferences – November 7, 2019 (Sean Michael Morris)
It’s the end of OpenEd as we know it… – November 5, 2019 (The Piraeus)
The crumbling of the OpenEd coalition – November 4, 2019 (eLiterate)
Well that was a memorable OpenEd conference – November 2, 2019 (Phil on EdTech)
The future of learning materials – October 15, 2019 (Open Oregon)
For-profit, faux-pen, and critical conversations about the future of learning materials – October 15, 2019 (Rajiv Jhangiani)
Ramifications of the downward pressure on pricing – October 1, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Everything old is new again: Textbooks, the printing press, the internet, and OER – August 13, 2019 (iterating toward openness)
Creative learning as a renewable resource – July 20, 2019 (University World News)
An open invitation – July 2, 2019 (Inside Higher Ed)
From static to interactive and from open to free – May 8, 2019 (iterating toward openness)
Defining the invisible labour of OER (webinar: audio & chat transcripts) – April 29, 2019 (Rebus Community)
OER, CARE, stewardship, and the Commons – March 17, 2018 (Econproph)
Considering open education with an interdisciplinary lens – March 8, 2018 (Teaching in Higher Ed podcast)
Open education inspiration – December 14, 2017 (Teaching in Higher Ed podcast)
The OER content trap – February 18, 2017 (Econprof)
The consensus around “open” – January 29, 2016 (iterating toward openness)
Open access, open data, open science…what does “openness” mean in the first place? – February 11, 2015 (Somatosphere)
Wiley, D. (2010). Openness as catalyst for an educational reformation. Educause Review.
Chenen. M. (N.d.). Gift economies in the gig economy (slides).
Homework systems
Cooking with/as metaphor: The H5P/PB kitchen – August 19, 2020 (CogDogBlog)
OE and online homework systems – October 16, 2019 (Inside Higher Ed)
Inclusive access (IA)
If inclusive access is on the horizon, ask yourself these nine questions – July 31, 2019 (OpenStax)
Giving inclusive access a second look – July 25, 2019 (OpenStax)
Colleges are striking bulk deals with textbook publishers. Critics say there are many downsides – May 23, 2019 (EdSurge)
Journals
Retroactively Open: Elsevier Backflips for NERL Agreement – March 16, 2022 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Is it true that most open access journals do not charge an APC? Sort of. It depends. – August 26, 2015 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Libraries/librarians
Evaluating Open Access in a Consortial Context – May 14, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Licences and subscriptions
Feasibility, sustainability, and the subscribe-to-open model – April 20, 2021 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
When the wolf finally arrives: Big deal cancellations in North American libraries – May 11, 2017 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Monographs
Open access monographs: Building better infrastructure – June 20, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Open educational practices (OEP)/pedagogy
Open research in practice: Moving from why to how? – June 17, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Today’s context demands use of OER – February 27, 2019 (Inside Higher Ed)
Give your students edit access to their course syllabus – November 20, 2018 (opensource.com)
Igniting our imagination in digital learning and pedagogy – November 9, 2017 (Teaching in Higher Ed, podcast)
Supporting deeper learning through OER and open educational practice – October 16, 2017 (ISKME)
Quick thoughts on open pedagogy – February 23, 2017 (iterating toward openness)
My open textbook: Pedagogy and practice – May 18, 2016 (actualham)
Pedagogy, technology, and the example of open educational resources – November 9, 2015 (Educause Review)
Open educational resources (OER)
Time for OER – November 30, 2021 (Community College Daily)
Open educational resources: question answered – June 9, 2020 (New America)
Administrators should adopt OERs only after careful vetting – April 20, 2020 (The Tech Edvocate)
The next phase for Open Education – April 9, 2020 (Hewlett Foundation)
Actually, the UNECSO recommendation makes most OER impossible – March 9, 2020 (iterating toward openness)
Annual OER survey: Momentum continues to grow as landscape evolves – March 10, 2020 (SPARC)
Angela DeBarger of the Hewlett Foundation on OER – January 15, 2020 (Michelson 20MM)
Legally speaking: The complications of open educational resources – October 4, 2019 (Against the Grain)
Exploring the future of open educational resources – March 11, 2019 (Hewlett Foundation)
Using open educational resources in your teaching – November 3, 2016 (Teaching in Higher Ed, podcast)
Open educational practice: Unleashing the potential of OER – August 9, 2016 (EdSurge)
Open peer review
Open peer review in the humanities – March 4, 2020 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Open science
Open science and intellectual property: Using open licenses to open your science – January 27, 2021 (Wilson Center: Science and Technology Innovation Program)
Open textbooks
No one wants to pay $200 for a textbook – April 15, 2021 (EdScoop)
Transform higher education – make textbooks free – October 26, 2020 (EdSource)
Open textbooks, in more ways than one: Save money and increase educational diversity with high-quality, up-to-date, learning options – June 29, 2020 (Daily News)
An update to OhioLINK’s affordable textbooks initiative – February 11, 2020 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
How professors help rip off students – December 11, 2019 (New York Times)
Open access books: The first 100 books from John Hopkins University Project – October 11, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Internal contradictions with open access books – June 4, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Governor Jerry Brown’s huge gift to California Community College students: Free textbooks – June 30, 2016 (Medium)
Open washing
What is ‘open’? Openwashing and the half-truths about openness – January 1, 2018 (ELearning Inside)
Partnerships
Also see Publishing/publishers on this page.
The Cengage-MHE merger and data danger – August 27, 2019 (eLiterate)
Carnegie Mellon and Lumen Learning announce EEP-relevant collaboration – April 15, 2019 (eLiterate)
Paying for OER
How to pay for open – December 20, 2017 (Open Oregon Educational Resources)
Platforms
Open source for scholarly publishing: An inventory and analysis – August 8, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Policy
Some very bad news about the UNESCO OER recommendation – December 2, 2019 (iterating toward openness)
Open education resources get international backing with UNESCO vote – November 27, 2019 (EdWeek Market Brief)
UNESCO recommendation on open educational resources (OER) – November 20, 2019 (infojustice.org)
Open and equitable scholarly communication: An ACRL research agenda – June 18, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
UNESCO OER recommendation: One step closer to adoption – June 4, 2019 (Creative Commons)
7 things you should know about open education: policies – 2018 (Educause)
Printing
Spotlight: Implementing publisher consignment rentals – March 6, 2019 (Foreword Online)
Public domain
Reproductions of public domain works should remain in the public domain – November 20, 2019 (Creative Commons)
Publishers/publishing
Also see Partnerships on this page.
How today’s curriculum content must change – July 13, 2021 (Market Scale)
SPARC crafts language in response to COVID-19 publisher offers – SPARC (2020)
Cengage/McGraw-Hill merger called off – May 4, 2020 (SPARC)
The “Pure Publish” agreement – February 20, 2020 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Architecting the future of open textbooks in Minneapolis – January 14, 2020 (Coko)
Why we should expand our OER advocacy to commercial publishers – November 18, 2019 (iterating toward openness)
Roadblocks to better open access models – October 9, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Textbook merger could create more problems than just higher prices – September 19, 2019 (The Conversation)
Questioning the textbook rep culture – September 18, 2019 (Inside Higher Ed)
Pearson’s born-digital move and frequency of updates – July 18, 2019 (e-Literate)
Pearson’s digital-first textbook initiative and student choice – July 16, 2019 (Phil on Ed Tech)
Why is it so hard to solve problems with technology? – June 6, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Internal contradictions with open access books – June 4, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Editing is at the heart of scholarly publishing – April 24, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Open access publishing: New evidence on faculty attitudes and behaviors – April 15, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
- Referencing this research: Blankstein, M., & Wolff-Eisenberg, C. (2019, April 12). Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2018. https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.311199
Rob Johnson on shifting relationship dynamics and imbalances in an open access world – April 3, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Strategic and non-strategic society publishing – March 18, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Revisiting: Governance and the not-for-profit publisher – March 5, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
The fallacy of open-access publication – November 15, 2017 (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Lumen Learning hosts Boundless OER course archive – September 15, 2017 (Lumen Learning Announcement)
The great unbundling of textbook publishers – October 22, 2016 (eLiterate)
Elsevier has started destroying SSRN – July 18, 2016 (SV-POW)
OER and for-profits: Are we selling out? – March 23, 2015 (eCampus News)
More on Boundless – April 16, 2012 (iterating toward openness)
The big publishers’ strategy on Boundless – April 9, 2012 (iterating toward openness)
Quality
Reframing the conversation about OER – February 20, 2019 (Inside Higher Ed)
Reading: paper vs. screens
Also see Inclusive Access.
When reading to learn, what works best for students — printed books or digital texts? – May 10, 2021 (Los Angeles Times)
Pros and cons of a physical textbook and an ebook – January 26, 2020 (Uloop Colleger)
What’s important to know about screens and reading – May 23, 2019 (Carolina Journal)
Do students lose depth in digital reading? – August 13, 2018 (Salon)
Remixing/Revising OER
Remixing an OER textbook (history) – January 9, 2019 (Dan Allosso)
Research
How Can We Achieve Equitable Participation in Open Research? – October 21, 2020 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Return on investment (ROI)
“But is it sustainable?” – December 20, 2017 (Open Oregon)
Exploring return-on-investment of open educational resources (slides) – 2017 (Yunfei Du, College of Information,
Savings
Support for a local approach to statewide OER data collection – July 10, 2019 (OpenOregon)
$1 billion in savings through open educational resources – October 12, 2018 (SPARC)
Scholarship
Scholarly communications shouldn’t just be open, but non-profit too – August 15, 2017 (LSE Impact Blog)
Social justice
Exploring open access for social justice – October 21, 2020 (UCF Libraries News & Blog)
Open in order to… (SPARC)
Sharing legally and freely for better learning – September 2017 (UNESCO)
Textbook costs
Cost of college includes hidden expenses for textbooks, course materials – January 13, 2021 (Teen Vogue)
Fall 2020 Updates: What do college students actually spend on course materials – November 8, 2020 (Phil on EdTech)
Why it’s so hard to lower the cost of textbooks – July 28, 2020 (EdSurge)
Automatic textbook billing – February 2020 (Kaitlyn Vitez, US PIRG Education Fund)
Low cost textbook alternatives: Worth the effort? – April 1, 2019 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
Bill Gates says the textbook is dying. Is he right? – February 23, 2019 (Forbes)
Learning altered by textbook cost – February 21, 2019 (Northern Star)
How textbook rentals undercut students – June 6, 2018 (Inside Higher Ed)
Is the average cost of a textbook $100? – February 17, 2017 (OpenOregon Educational Resources)
Asking what students spend on textbooks is the wrong question – November 9, 2015 (Hapgood)
Bad data can lead to bad policy: College students don’t spend $1200+ on textbooks – November 8, 2015 (e-Literate)
Not all books are created equal – September 8, 2014 (The FRED Blog)
Traditional knowledge (TK)
Is it possible to decolonize the Commons? An interview with Jane Anderson of Local Contexts – January 30, 2019 (Creative Commons)
Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
Also see Accessibility
A taxonomy of inclusive design: On disclosure, accessibility, and inclusion – November 15, 2019 (Educause Review)