This blog is designed to serve as the home base for the university of Oklahoma libraries open educational resources initiative. Though we are not an official blog of OU or the libraries, this is the place where we will roll out new ideas, share our work and process, and will serve as a place for reflection as we launch this OER initiative. This blog as our thinking place and our experimental working space. Our official sites are:
Cody Taylor:
I am assistant to the open educational resources coordinator at the University of Oklahoma. I will regularly be posting information, news, and blurbs about the open education movement, specifically that which is happening on our campus. My interest in “open” things began several years ago when I was introduced to open-source software. When I began using it, I was intrigued to see professional-quality software being given away freely. This was foreign to me. It was a while before I realized that this open way of thinking was not rare. In fact, when I began to learn more about open , I was surprised by what I found; there are many communities who selflessly share their potentially profitable creations! I thought this was wonderful and began to gravitate towards these open communities.
My interest in open things pre-dates my decision to study Electrical Engineering. That is, before I started classes here at OU, I was using open resources to study microcontrollers as a hobby. The more open content that I used the more enthusiastic I became about the open movement. I was finding entire online classes, circuit diagrams, books, images, code, music, 3-D printable models, and countless other things, all of which were being offered for free to the community. It was the free nature of open things that got me interested in them, but it is the open philosophy surrounding them that I am passionate about today. Access to information: academic journals, textbooks, lectures or supplemental materials, cannot continue to be restricted. It simply is not sustainable. It is time that the academic community embrace the technological capabilities of the 21st century to facilitate education in a way that is true to its very purpose. The shift of universities to more affordable, freely accessible resources has already begun. All it takes to make this obvious is a quick look at other schools: MIT, Yale, and Notre Dame to name a few are all shifting toward openness. I am excited to be part of the team that is bringing this change to OU.
