If Content is King, Then Let Openness be Queen

Presentation at the MERLOT 2009 Conference. Open educational resources (OER) provide today's educators ith unparalleled opportunities for collaboration and nnovation. Launched in 2007, the Community College onsortium for Open Educational Resources supports such opportunities to marry learning content with access. The goal of the Consortium is to create an open textbook development and production approach that meets the needs of college students through the identification, organization production, and use of open textbooks that fulfill the academic requirements of educational systems, nationwide. Participants will explore specific ways to become active in the OER educational resources movement, share knowledge, and break free of traditional and expensive textbooks. Key to successful and sustained use of open textbooks by educators are viable tools for faculty to customize and share learning content for use in the classroom. Participants will critique the usefulness of existing guidelines and tools for open textbook identification, adoption, peer review, development, and dissemination.

Participants will be asked to volunteer to demonstrate use of various tools and guidelines for open textbook identification, adoption, peer review, development, and dissemination. The audience will rate the various tools and guidelines on a checklist.