Engineering Education

Open Educational Resources (OER) are any type of educational material freely available for teachers and students to use, adapt, share, and reuse.

Examples of OER include learning content (such as lesson plans, assignments, textbooks, exams, and videos) as well as tools for learning (like software for creating videos and websites, course management systems, word processing programs, and training materials).

Numerous studies indicate that the use of OER increases student success measures such as GPA, retention, and test scores and decreases withdrawal rates. Furthermore, research shows that first students from historically underserved groups and first-generation students benefit the most from the open textbooks and OER adoption.

OER are free and available online, which means that anyone can access and use them. When an instructor makes their teaching material openly available, they can teach far beyond their own classroom. Students can also access these materials, whether they are supplementing a course they are already taking or starting out on an educational journey.

By creating and adopting OER, students and teachers can connect around the world, opening up networks of learning and enhancing collaboration opportunities. Read a story here about a yak herder in Tibet learning poetry from a Stanford professor.

Open science, as defined by the federal government, is the principle and practice of making research products and processes available to all, while respecting diverse cultures, maintaining security and privacy, and fostering collaborations, reproducibility, and equity (OSTI, 2023). Federal agencies named 2023 as the year of open science and are working to increase engagement with events and activities that advance the adoption of open science principals. Open science includes; open access publishing, open research data, and open research and methodologies. The goals behind open science are to increase the reproducibility, quality, impact, transparency, and evaluation of all research steps and products.

There are numerous resources available to learn more and participate in Open Science:

Year of Open Science Toolkit - Access materials that highlight and provide information about Open Science. 

Open Science Announcements from Federal Agencies - Explore how fourteen federal agencies are promoting and developing initiatives to increase Open Science.

Center for Open Science - Produces open-source products and services to achieve their mission of increasing openness, integrity, and reproducibility of research.

UNESCO - Learn more about global standards and a proposed international framework for open science.

Reference:

OSTI, Open Science Announcements from Federal Agencies. Science.gov Alliance. Retrieved February 21, 2023 from https://open.science.gov/