University of Arkansas OER Resources and Opportunities

The University of Arkansas OER program

The University of Arkansas has a conversion program for assisting authors in creating their open textbooks and assistive materials.  The Libraries and Global Campus fund and staff this program.  Persons enrolled in the conversion program may receive assistance from both offices to assist in the creation process.

The OER Course Materials Conversion Program

The University Libraries and the Global Campus offer faculty extra compensation funding to encourage moving from high cost commercially published textbooks to open educational resources (OER). There are three levels or compensation: $7500 for OER creation; $4500 for OER adaptation; and $3000 for OER adoption. The end goal for each course is to dramatically reduce the materials cost (textbooks) for enrolled students. The OER must replace the current textbook.

Adopting OER is defined as choosing existing open educational resources such as textbooks, online video, online learning modules published under open licenses into one’s class, thereby eliminating the need for students to purchase textbooks or other course materials. Adopters choose to adopt textbooks as they are making few changes to the resources. It is expected that adopters will possibly need to revise their course layout, assignments, and possibly create ancillary materials. However, there is a growing body of ancillary materials available for existing open textbooks.

Adapting OER is defined as choosing existing open educational resource and significantly remixing it to update the material or to fit the needs of the course. It is expected that the adapted OER would be published under an appropriate open license for use by others. The OER would then be assigned in the specified course, thereby eliminating the need for students to purchase textbooks or other course materials.

Creating OER is defined as an original creation of at least 75% of the course content. The remainder can be adopted from existing openly published resources. The final product must be submitted as a complete textbook that can be used to fully teach a course. It must be submitted as a format that can be printed in pdf format. It may also be created as an interactive online resource as well. It must eliminate the need for student to purchase traditional textbooks.

Adoption = Reuse
Adaptation = Remix
Creation = Build from scratch

Adapted and created OERs are assigned digital object identifiers (DOIs) as appropriate and will be indexed in the Open Textbook Library.

These workshops provide faculty with a “Sprint” style opportunity to work on converting courses to an affordable/open format. Classes that do not require a full/complete traditional textbook are excellent candidates for this program. Instructors will utilize open educational resources, free online resources, and electronic library materials as class teaching resources. They can also create resources and license them openly as part of this program.

We thank our previous workshop participants for their contributions. We do intend on offering this option soon, but it needs a bit of retooling. Thank you for your patience. If you have any comments or questions, please contact us at oer@uark.edu