Seton Hall University Libraries Celebrate Open Education Week 2021

Open Education Week will take place this year from Monday, March 1st — Friday, March 5th. Started in 2012, Open Education Week is an opportunity to share and learn about the latest achievements in open education. Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or released with intellectual property licenses that facilitate the free use, adaptation and distribution of resources” (UNESCO, 2019).

To coincide with Open Education Week, University Libraries is sponsoring several events:

1. Wednesday, March 3rd from 12:30pm – 1:30pm the Center for Faculty Development is presenting an online workshop — Reducing Book Costs for Students with Open Educational Resources — co-sponsored with Seton Hall University Libraries. At this workshop, Seton Hall librarians will explain the benefits of OER, demonstrate how library resources can help bring down the cost of textbooks, and provide faculty with practical tools and resources for using open textbooks in their courses. To join the workshop click here.

2. Thursday, March 4th from 3:00pm – 4:00pm join us for a roundtable discussion on the benefits and challenges of integrating open educational resources, open textbooks and/or library e-resources in your courses. If you have had experience with open materials or are interested in learning more about them, we would love to hear from you. This event is open to faculty, administrators and students – come and be heard! To join the discussion on Teams click here.

3. Friday, March 5th @ 10:30 TLTC is hostinga virtual session Leveraging Open Educational Resources. Explore the wide range of Open Educational Resources (OER) that reside in the public domain and are free to use for teaching and learning. Register here.

4. Friday, March 5th from 10:00am-12pm, then 1:00pm-3:00pm Seton Hall Librarians will provide virtual office hours for anyone who has questions about OER. Feel free to meet with:

Prof. Gerry Shea (Communication Librarian)
10:00am-12pm Join on Teams

Prof. Kyle Downey (Nursing/Heath Science Librarian)
1:00pm-3:00pm Join on Teams

Prof. Lisa Rose-Wiles (Science Librarian)
10:00am-12pm Join on Teams
1:00pm-3:00pm Join on Teams


Want to learn more about OER?
Reach out to Prof. Gerry Shea | Explore our OER Research Guide here

Dr. Wyatt Murphy on Open Educational Resources

To help foster a constructive conversation about Open Educational Resources (OER), University Libraries asked Dr. Wyatt Murphy, Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Seton Hall, his thoughts about how OER can help students and faculty.  

University Libraries have been at the forefront of promoting Open Educational Resources (OER) on campus. Can you share your thoughts on how OER can help students and faculty as an alternative to the traditional publisher textbook model?

As a student, when you are talking about a $250 textbook that is being used all over and it’s been homogenized, there’s not much there, it’s disposable. A question student should ask: is this book good enough for me to keep, am I going to get value out of this?

But if the OER textbook book costs nothing, and if it’s equivalent to the publisher’s textbook, there’s more value to an open source book. Students can keep it; they can mark it up any way they want digitally. In an open source textbook, the quality and creativity is often greater than a standard textbook, and that’s going to just expand.

With OER textbooks the thing I like best is: I might not want to write a whole book, but I might want to write a chapter because I have a different way of looking at things, you know (I’ve been teaching for almost 40 years) and I found that this is a better way to teach this. The conversations we’ve had over in Chemistry where, we’re bouncing around ideas about how to do things, we kind of have to find books that fit it. We can put a book together but it’s assembling other people’s stuff.

I think that a lot of people look at open sources, and think “Well, it’s free. It can’t be good.” My experience is “It’s free and it’s great!” I’ve used this book Chemistry: Atoms First 2e now it’ll be two years by end of the summer 2020. When you walk into class and when you put in your syllabus that the book is free, the students are going to love you, you know, you’re a hero. And the thing is, I don’t feel like I’m compromising my choice.

To learn more about Open Educational Resources, please visit our OER Research Guide.