Open Education

Open Education (OE) is a movement towards ACCESS for more students, allowing them more AGENCY and ADVOCACY in their own education.

Open Educational Practices (OEP) is is a concept that centers students and utilizes tools, resources, and practices that are open (free from monetary, legal, and other limitations) for collaboration adaptation and revision thus bridging the gaps of ACCESS, equity, representation, and nonformal and formal education. 

Open Educational Resources (OER) are materials that support course work – from textbooks to videos to digital learning objects to practice problems. Once an OER is created it is involved in the ecosystem of the 5Rs: Retain, Reuse, Remix, Revise, Redistribute.

Open Pedagogy is:

• Active learning in which students demonstrate understanding through the act of creation.
• Technologies that are leveraged to fashion creative work for an external audience.
• The production of new informational or educational resources, which student creators are invited to share openly. 

Open Access (OA) is a practice of publishing data and research findings openly, I.e. distributed via the internet with no barriers to ACCESS (like a paywall for example). This push for open access data drives a more transparent peer review process, and offers the opportunity to engage the public in a variety of data driven ways.  

We will also be seeing more Open Access research in the near future as the White House Office of Science and Technology offered guidance on making tax payer supported research available to the public at no cost.  

HB1027 is is a House Bill that passed in June 2021, and became effective in September of 2021 and requires the disclosure of material type and cost to students at public institutions of higher education. Additional information can be found on the Registrar's website. 

Affordable Learning Materials (ALM) at Texas State are materials that are copyright protected and cost $50 or less INCLUDING PRINTING (posters, presentations, final reports, etc.); Available through the University at no cost to students, and Copyright-protected material that may be provided to students at no cost by applying fair uses. 

Open Education

Isabelle Antes - Open Educational Resources/Interim Business Librarian  

Tricia Boucher - Open Pedagogy/STEM Librarian  

Open Scholarship

Laura Waugh - Assistant Director of Research Data Services  

Stephanie Towery - Copyright & Open Access Initiatives Librarian 

Kristin van Diest - Digital Publishing Librarian 

Dr. Xuan Zhou - Data Curation Specialist 

Tara Spies Smith - Open Licenses Librarian 

Pressbooks - Pressbooks is an online publishing platform and content repository, and Texas State has an instance which allows Staff, Faculty, and Students to engage in research, scholarly communication, publication, and distribution of their materials. Pressbooks offers multimedia integration, integration with Canvas and other Learning Management Systems, and the ability to have auto graded assignments through the use of digital learning objects, like H5P.

Open Educational Resources LibGuide - A Texas State Library Guide to Open Educational Resources and what is available by college. 

Find Open Education Materials - This is a Microsoft ecosystem based application that allows you to search for resources, sites, and materials for your courses.

Open Research Services - Find resources for Open Access Publishing, Data Services, and more! 

Open Scholarship - Open scholarship promotes knowledge equity, increases the readership of your work, and promotes research impact across the globe.

The openTXST grant offered by University Libraries is an opportunity for faculty and staff to apply for support transforming their projects or courses into experiences based on open educational resources (OER).  Additional consideration will be given to projects or courses that incorporate the following components:

• Open Pedagogy - Open Pedagogy gives students agency to direct their own learning, and empowers them to engage with the academic, civil, and digital world by sharing what they've learned in new and creative ways  

• Alignment with student success initiatives  

• Highlighting unique opportunities at Texas State 

You can find more information by reading our openTXST Grant Application Information document.  

You can apply for the openTXST Grant by submitting your proposal via the openTXST Grant Application form.