The Maryland Open Source Textbook Initiative Launches Tool to Advance the Adoption of Open Educational Resources
Baltimore, Md. (Feb. 7, 2020) -- The Maryland Open Source Textbook (M.O.S.T.) initiative--a priority project for the University System of Maryland’s William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation and state higher education partners-has launched M.O.S.T. Commons (https://most.oercommons.org/), a collaborative, online space designed to support faculty and staff in adopting, creating, and sharing open educational resources (OER). M.O.S.T. Commons serves as the foundation for the M.O.S.T. initiative, which is supporting statewide collaboration on affordable, high-quality educational resources that are openly licensed and fully accessible.
Open educational resources (OER) are freely available, fully accessible instructional materials that either reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits the use, revision, improvement, and redistribution by others. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support learning (adapted from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s definition).
Through M.O.S.T. Commons, faculty across Maryland can explore curated collections of OER, build, publish, and share OER content, and collaborate with their colleagues within and across institutions to build educational solutions for their students.
Among the first to engage with M.O.S.T. Commons, Wor-Wic Community College has launched an Institutional Site for use by their faculty and staff. Institutional Sites are custom resource centers nested within the M.O.S.T. Commons where colleges and universities can bring groups of educators together to create, organize and share OER collections that meet common goals.
The Wor-Wic Institutional Site (https://most.oercommons.org/hubs/worwic) has been created to support the institution’s OER activities in the areas of General Studies, STEM, Business and Student Development. “Wor-Wic is excited to be part of the M.O.S.T. initiative to assist faculty with the development of additional open educational resources. By creating more resources for students that are available at little or no cost, Wor-Wic will be able to help reduce costs for students while improving the learning environment,” said Dr. Kristin Mallory, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Wor-Wic Community College.
“Through M.O.S.T. we support Maryland colleges and universities to leverage the affordances of open educational resources to increase access, affordability, and achievement for students. Ten additional Maryland colleges and universities are working to establish Institutional Sites, and all others are welcome,” said Dr. MJ Bishop, the University System of Maryland’s Associate Vice Chancellor and Director of the William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation.
Led by the USM Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation in partnership with MarylandOnline (MOL), the Maryland Association of Community Colleges (MACC), and the Maryland Independent College and University Association (MICUA), M.O.S.T. has saved over 65,000 students $10.4 million in cumulative textbooks costs across 159 courses at 24 institutions since Spring 2014.
For more information about M.O.S.T. visit http://www.oer-maryland.org/.
Contact: Mike Lurie
Phone: 301.445.2719
Email: mlurie@usmd.edu