Open access (OA) is a method of sharing scholarship that is "digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes OA possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder. OA is entirely compatible with peer review, and all the major OA initiatives for scientific and scholarly literature insist on its importance. Just as authors of journal articles donate their labor, so do most journal editors and referees participating in peer review. OA literature is not free to produce, even if it is less expensive to produce than conventionally published literature."
--From Open Access Overview, by Peter Suber
Bethune Cookman University OER Initiative
Bethune--Cookman University was selected to attend AAC&U’s 2022-2023 Institute on Open Educational Resources.
As part of this important selection, The Office of the Provost appointed Dr. Hector N. Torres to lead our Open Educational Resources (OER) Initiative.
Our students' rapidly changing composition and circumstances compel us to expand our cultural understandings, organizational constructs, digital creativity, and pedagogical approaches to create learning opportunities and environments that meet our student’s needs and support.
OER has proven to be a viable affordability strategy for higher education; however, providing all students with free materials on the first day of class also tends to level aspects of the academic playing field. Research on OER has demonstrated that performance gaps have been narrowed, and failure and withdrawal rates have been reduced in some contexts. As a result, OER is emerging as both a quality and an equity strategy for higher education which B-CU will engage as we develop and revise our student success initiatives.
B-CU is excited about the OER Initiative as we seek to further our campus’s quality, equity, and affordability goals through OER.
The OER Initiative has the support of the faculty and the administrative leadership and is part of the Office of the Provost’s continued collaboration with the institution’s Academic Colleges.