UTA Libraries Celebrates Open Education Week

UTA Libraries will join with organizations across the globe to celebrate Open Education Week from March 6-10. Open Education Week’s mission is to raise awareness of resources and educational materials that are free to use at no cost or are openly licensed for reuse with modification. 

Jessica McClean, Director of Open Educational Resources, stated that these materials help to make knowledge accessible to larger groups of people where cost might be a factor. 

“First of all, open educational materials reduce the costs for our students, having to pay for their course materials,” Jessica said. “Also, having faculty members publish OER is a great way to have them share their expertise and knowledge. We are then able to spread it across the world.” 

Jessica stated that Open Education Week showcases the work going on at the university. It allows students to see the resources available to them and can be an encouragement to future authors.  

One of the resources available here at the university that helps make more of these materials available is Mavs Open Press, founded in 2018.  

“Our first textbook was published on the Pressbooks site in 2018. Since then, we have published 26 faculty-authored textbooks that have a huge number of views and are being used around the world,” Jessica said. “The ‘Applied Fluid Mechanics Lab Manual,’ published through Mavs Open Press, has had more than 1 million global views since it was published.” 

 

Some of the books that have been published through Mavs Open Press include:  

· “Microbiomes: Health and the Environment” by Dylan Parks,  

· “Big Data for Epidemiology” by Tiffany Kindratt  

· “Where Does Art Come From?” by Leah McCurdy  

· “Building Information Modeling using Revit for Architects and Engineers” by Atefe Makhmalbaf   

· “How History is Made: A Student’s Guide to Reading, Writing and Thinking in the Discipline” by Stephanie Cole; Kimberly Breuer; Scott W. Palmer; and Brandon Blakeslee  

Jessica stated there are many benefits to Open Education Resources materials, such as ease of use and no cost to students. It also allows faculty to customize and make a textbook precisely how they want it and tailor it to the course they teach.  

Michelle Reed, Former UTA Director of Open Educational Resources and current Head of Scholarly and Media Commons at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, stated significant growth in open education has taken place across the state of Texas over the last few years.  

“It’s incredible to see these OER projects grow and thrive over time. When faculty choose open and affordable course content, the benefits to students' compound,” Michelle said. “These choices save students money, of course, but they also save time, reduce stress, and increase agency. For students, the difference between OER and commercial resources can be life-changing.” 

During Open Education Week, there are going to be several events to raise awareness about what OER and Mavs Open Press can provide to the UTA community. Information about Open Education Week events is available through the UTA Libraries website, https://libraries.uta.edu/oeweek.  

People interested in utilizing OER’s Mavs Open Press to publish a textbook or use an already-created book can contact the department at OER@uta.edu.