OER Archive

  • OER in Action: The GC Music Teaching Hub

    This is the latest in our series of short essays about Open Educational Resources (OER). The GC Music Teaching Hub is organized by current and former graduate teaching fellows of the CUNY Graduate Center Music Department, and is now receiving OER funding through the Mina […]

    Full Story

  • Teaching Spanish Language and Gender with Open Resources

    This is the latest in our current series of short essays by participants in the Open Knowledge Fellowship coordinated by the Mina Rees Library. Fellows share insight into the process of converting a syllabus to openly-licensed and/or zero-cost resources, as well as their experiences teaching […]

    Full Story

  • Apply now! Open Knowledge Fellowship | Spring 2023

    The Library seeks applications for the Spring 2023 cohort of the Open Knowledge  Fellowship, which provides a $2000 stipend for participating Graduate Center doctoral students. Apply by Wednesday 1/11/23 at 5pm EST! We look forward to hearing from you. Feel free to reach out with […]

    Full Story

  • Portrait of the author

    Open Access Requires Access: An Irony of OER

    When it came time to start replacing items on my syllabus with “open” versions, I realized the limitations of OER. Only one of the resources on my syllabus was widely accessible to all regardless of institutional affiliation.

    Full Story

  • Portrait of the author

    Shifting Out of Neutral into OER

    I was eager to find ways to lessen the financial burden of being a college student in a university system that was once and should still be free to attend. I struggled to find resources that could make my courses a zero-cost experience and introduce students to critical traditions in psychology that are typically excluded in mainstream psychology textbooks and curricula.

    Full Story

  • Photograph of author reading large book, next to a mildly surprised-looking brown dog.

    Increasing Engagement via Zero Cost

    It felt wrong, from the beginning, to require my students to find the money and spend so much on a book we would only read a few texts from, [made up of] classics of literature that largely belong to the public domain.... I needed to learn how to make this right and allow my students to engage with my course materials without having to go penniless for it.

    Full Story

  • Knowledge, Power, and OER

    Encountering a paywall on my way to some piece of scholarship prompts me into critically questioning the systems of power that keep people in and out of the spaces where knowledge circulates and is transformed and grows, and in/out of the borders of peer-reviewed research in the various fields of specialized knowledge.

    Full Story

  • “Researcher first, teacher second”: Time-Saving Suggestions for Open-Access Teaching

    Whenever I thought about exchanging my textbook for open access materials, I was cowed by the amount of time and effort I imagined such a process taking. I had spent years designing my slides, quizzes, lectures, and course schedules around my textbook—how could I square a complete course overhaul with the axiom of “researcher first, teacher second”?

    Full Story

  • Defending Music Appreciation Against Its Devotees

    A music appreciation course, even one centered on the traditional body of European literate music, can have an emancipatory effect. [This effect], however, is limited in starkly practical terms by the availability of its pedagogical materials.

    Full Story

  • OA/OER is a Liberatory Political Act

    This is the tenth in our current series of short essays by participants in the Open Knowledge Fellowship coordinated by the Mina Rees Library, these from Fellows in the Spring 2022 cohort. Fellows share insight into the process of converting a syllabus to openly-licensed and/or […]

    Full Story

Skip to toolbar