Open Education 2016

Successful course redesign for OER implementation requires a university-wide effort, with faculty working together with their academic departments, libraries, instructional design units, university presses/publishers, centers for faculty excellence, as well as other stakeholders across the university. Among the stakeholders, librarians play a critical role, assisting faculty with locating and identifying digital resources, open educational resources, and public domain materials, as primary or supplementary course materials. In order to reduce instructional costs for students, and to improve teaching and learning outcomes, George Mason University has recently launched a pilot project focusing on innovative and accessible course redesign which integrates use of open educational digital materials. In Spring 2016, competitive grants were awarded to 11 faculty to lead the redesign of 20 undergraduate and graduate courses across 10 disciplines. Courses in the pilot include those that (1) have high enrollment numbers; (2) required courses for majors; (3) count in the Mason Core (general educational requirements); or (4) carry high textbook costs. The redesigned courses using open educational resources will be taught in Fall 2016 or Spring 2017. In this presentation, we will provide an update on the course redesign pilot for adopting, assessing, and developing OERs; we will describe the role of Mason University Libraries and other university stakeholders in the course-redesign OER project; and we will share Mason faculty and student perspectives about integrating OERs into the redesigned courses.