OpenCon 2016: Part Two – Tinkering Librarians

"The last major focus for OpenCon was Open Education. Open education is about opening lecture notes, assignments, and creating and using open textbooks. With dwindling budgets, states scrambling to find qualified teachers in an ever dwindling pool, and teachers burning out on a daily basis, open education should have a brighter spotlight. Using open textbooks can save schools and college students a great deal of money. Open lecture notes and assignments helps often overworked teachers and new teachers save time by not having to build each class from scratch and lessening preparation time at home. 

Understanding the value of open education, the Department of Education has a #GoOpen campaign, encouraging k-12 schools to use open resources. There are 25 states with at least one open district, 5 of which have four or more districts. More and more colleges are adopting open textbooks. Libraries are creating tools to help professors identify potential open textbooks. One community college went so far as to create entirely open degree, a degree where every class uses open materials.

Open has been a key resource in help expand educational reach with limited resources; in Latin America where the culture of academic discourse is open thanks to leveraging of government funding; and in the Middle East and Africa to help decolonize academic research by broadening reach of academics in developing nations. However, in the U.S. is only now gaining steam. It seems that open is at a tipping point here, and that is largely due to the increasing need it can fill. Budgets are getting cut and science is inhibited by researchers’ inability to get access to the articles they need. Open can be a solution to some of the problems we face, but only if we change the culture at institutions to be more open to it."