NMOER Consortium's Introductory OER Workshops

The New Mexico Open Educational Resources Consortium, or the NMOER Consortium, is holding three workshops this fall to help NM educators find free, open, high-quality resources to use in their classes. These workshops are geared toward educators, students, staff, and administrators at New Mexico's post-secondary institutions. 

The first workshop, titled Getting Started with OER will cover basics for researching and identifying OERs in your disciplines. The second workshop, Finding and Evaluating High Quality OER, will cover evaluation criteria for OER and planning an OER project. We will also do a Creative Commons license deep dive. And the third workshop, Developing Inclusive OER, will cover a range of accessibility and inclusivity topics. 

Dates and details for these workshops are located down below:

1. Friday, September 27, 2024: Getting Started with OER 
2. Friday, October 25, 2024: Finding and Evaluating High Quality OER
3. Friday, November 22, 2024: Developing Inclusive OER

Open Access Week

Save the date! Open Access Week happens October 21st-27th. This year's theme is Community over Commercialization, which is a continuation of last year’s theme to prioritize open scholarship. The University Libraries, Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center, and the UNM Law Library are working together to create a slate of informative and engaging events for the UNM community and beyond. Check back closer to the fall semester for a more detailed rundown of this year's events, and you can also learn about past Open Access Week events here at UNM on our OA Week library guide. 

Open Textbook Pilot Program

During the 2024-2025 Academic Year, the OER initiative at UNM has the potential to save students between $466,000 and $486,000 based on historic enrollments and textbook prices. This fall, the University Libraries would like the savings to continue. The University of New Mexico Open Textbook Pilot Program is holding its annual call for proposals for OER adoption, adaptation, and creation grants. This program is designed to support faculty, instructors, and graduate students with the adoption, adaptation, and creation of OER materials into their courses as a way to increase student success.  

OER work, particularly OER authorship and development, can require a high level of effort on the part of instructors. Register for this session to receive information about the program: 

• Find out more about the application process;
• Learn about the evaluation process for applications;
• Discover OER research methods and repositories;
• Ask questions of the OER Librarian.

Information session dates:

• Tuesday, August 27^th, 2024 @ 1 p.m.
• Wednesday, September 11^th, 2024 @ 1 p.m.
• Tuesday, September 24^th, 2024 @ 10 a.m.

The deadline to submit applications for the second annual Open Textbook Pilot Program is October 1st, 2024. These proposals will be evaluated by a subcommittee of the OER Working Group. Work in this program should begin in the spring and/or summer of 2025.

The following library guide for the grant program contains more details and the link to fill out an application: goto.unm.edu/oerotp