SPARC Projects

Connect OER

Open Education

Minnesota State University, Mankato

Mankato, MN, United States
Official Website • @MNSUMankato

Type: Public 4-Year
Annual Enrollment: 15,387

  SPARC Member  

OER Webpage
OER LibGuide

Overview

For the last four years, we have continually increased our outreach efforts in regards to OER. Instructional designers started offering professional development programs to faculty to raise awareness and increase OER adoption efforts. Last year, the instructional design team and library partnered together to combine our efforts on both OER and textbook affordability. We have developed a strategic plan that will help guide our programming. Two grants have provided funding for faculty to support their time and effort in revising courses or developing their own open textbooks. This academic year we were accepted as an institutional partner with OpenStax and hope to gain insights and mentoring in further developing OER programming. On our campus, we have an OER interest group open to all members of the campus community, the Library Textbook Affordability Group that functions as a steering committee for our OER and textbook affordability programs, and an instructional designer and librarian that act as leads for the campus community on these topics.
This academic year (2020-2021), we are focusing on our institutional partnership with OpenStax to increase our efforts around OER adoption for the high enrollment courses. This year we are also focusing on raising awareness about Open Pedagogy and we will be offering a professional development workshop in the Spring for faculty on Open Pedagogy, Open Access, and Open Educational Resources. We are also continuing our textbook cost analysis, comparing enrollment numbers to the cost of textbooks so we can get an accurate picture of where students are spending the most money on textbooks. The library is working to provide digital library holdings to faculty and students in a 1:1 replacement for current textbooks. This makes use of resources we already pay for, while making it an easy first step for faculty to transition to a lower-cost option.

Campus Details

Campus Entities Most Active in Efforts Advancing OER:

Academic Subjects With Greatest OER Traction:

Mechanisms to Support OER Included in the Following:

OER Staff Location:



Point of Contact

Heidi Southworth
Digitial Initiatives Librarian