Past Events

UNM OE Week Events

March 2 | 4 - 6 p.m. | Zimmerman 254

Zines & Paper Crafts Crafternoon

Want an afternoon study or work break? Join us for a crafternoon celebrating Open Educational Resources and indie publishing.

Bring your own project or come try one of ours for free, including Zine making and paper crafts. No registration needed!

Hosted by UNM OER and LRE-U Engagement

March 3 & 4 | 11 - 1 p.m. | Smith Plaza (Between Zimmerman and the SUB)

Open Education Free Book Fair

Join UNM OER and the Friends of the Public Library for a free book giveaway! The Friends will bring a wide selection of books for UNM students to take home.

Along with free books, you’ll also learn about the power of Open Educational Resources (OER):

  • Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that anyone can freely use, adapt, and share. OER lower costs for students, expand access to course materials, and give educators the flexibility to customize content.

Stop by to:

  • Pick up a free book to enjoy.
    • There will be books in many languages to choose form: Arabic, English, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, and Swahili
  • Learn how OER is transforming access to knowledge.
  • Explore how open licensing makes it possible to reuse and remix educational and research materials.
  • Get details on other Open Education Week events happening across campus.

March 4 | 2 - 3 p.m. | Zoom

Advocating for OER, One Step at a Time

Learn how higher education institutions across New Mexico are advancing open educational resources through advocacy. Panelists from Central New Mexico Community College, Eastern New Mexico University, Northern New Mexico College, Santa Fe Community College, and the University of New Mexico will discuss what OER advocacy looks like in different institutional settings, large and small. The discussion will cover short- and long-term planning, plus, how to create smaller, focused activities that can yield tangible results. Attendees will leave with concrete ideas for sustaining OER awareness, working together with faculty, and increasing Open Educational Practices (OEP).

Panelists

  • Elisha Allen, Director, Online Strategies and Academic Technologies, UNM
  • Christine Goshorn, Executive Director, Innovation & Instructional Support, CNM
  • Jennifer Jordan, Principal Investigator, NMOER; OER Librarian and Assistant Professor, UNM
  • Valerie Nye, Library Director, SFCC
  • Martin Shupla, Library Director, NNMC
  • Laura Wight, Director of Golden Library, ENMU

March 5 | 10 - 11 a.m. | Zoom

Getting Started with OER

You’ve likely heard about OER and how it can save students money. But did you also know that OER can increase student engagement and retention? The 2022 Florida Student Survey found that 53% of the 13,000 students they surveyed did not purchase a required textbook for a course due to its cost. Because of textbook costs, forty-three percent of students in the survey took fewer courses, and twenty-four percent of students surveyed reported dropping out of a course (Florida Virtual Campus 2022).

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.

This workshop will also cover the different ways educators can integrate these resources into their courses. All New Mexico educators, students, staff, and administrators are invited to learn about how to get started with OER.

Presented by Jennifer Jordan, Principal Investigator, NMOER; OER Librarian and Assistant Professor, UNM

March 5 | 1 - 3 p.m. | Zimmerman 254

Zines & Paper Crafts Crafternoon

Want an afternoon study or work break? Join us for a crafternoon celebrating Open Educational Resources and indie publishing.

Bring your own project or come try one of ours for free, including Zine making and paper crafts. No registration needed!

Hosted by UNM OER and LRE-U Engagement

Open Access Month at UNM 

This year we will be celebrating Open Access Month through the entire month of October! That way we can share even more activities and knowledge with everyone. See the events below and the UNM Press Release.

Poster Display Showcasing OER at UNM

The University of New Mexico is proud to showcase the innovative work of faculty who are transforming teaching and learning through Open Educational Resources (OER).

From October 1 – October 31, 2025, a special poster display will be featured inside Zimmerman Library’s North Entrance. Visitors will be able to explore posters highlighting 12 different UNM classes currently using OER, spanning disciplines from Chemistry to Art History, World Literature, Architecture, Swahili, and more.

The display will also include an introductory poster about OER, explaining how these free and adaptable learning materials help increase student success, reduce textbook costs, and make education more accessible for everyone.

We invite students, faculty, and community members to stop by Zimmerman throughout the month of October to learn more about how OER is shaping the classroom experience at UNM.

Showcasing Scholarship: A Tour of UNM’s Digital Repository

📅 10/6/2025

🕛 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

📍 Zoom; Register for the session

This session will provide faculty, researchers, and students with an overview of the newly redesigned UNM Digital Repository, including:

  • A virtual tour of the refreshed interface and improved navigation
  • An overview of how the repository supports open access and public scholarship at UNM
  • Guidance on how to upload scholarly and creative works
  • Tips on increasing the visibility and long-term impact of your contributions

Speakers: Raelynn Richardson & Laura J. Hall

Identifying Open Access Practices in Librarianship Journals

📅 10/9/2025

🕐 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

📍 Zoom, Register for the session

Do librarianship journals really practice the values of open access? Librarians Blair Solon and Jennifer Jordan will present findings from their recent publication, “Identifying Open Access Practices in Librarianship Journals.” While librarians have long championed open access publishing, this study reveals varying inconsistencies and gaps in how journals actually apply these principles. From transparency challenges to uneven policies, this research presents a snapshot of the situation and why this is important to scholarly communication. Come to this exciting talk to hear more about librarianship journal open access policies.

Speakers: Blair Solon & Jennifer Jordan

Open Access 101

📅 10/13/2025

🕐 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

📍 Zoom, Register for the session

The Health Sciences Library & Informatics Center is pleased to offer Open Access Publishing 101. This session will provide researchers and scholars with basic information about open access publishing including:

  • Models and paths to Open Access
  • Funding options such as article processing charges, publisher/transformative agreements, and including as a line item in grant proposals
  • How these options may influence selection of scholarly output
  • Open access publishing options currently available at UNM including existing publisher agreements and the UNM Digital Repository will also be discussed.

Speaker: Robyn M. Gleasner

Understanding the NIH Public Access Policy

📅 10/15/2025

🕛 12:00 pm - 12:30 pm

📍 Zoom, Register for the session

Are you doing National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded research or applying for an NIH grant? Recent changes to the NIH Public Access Policy—created to increase equitable access to funded research—could impact your publications. In this workshop, we will briefly review the requirements of the 2024 NIH Public Access Policy, which applies to all peer-reviewed journal manuscripts from NIH-funded research accepted for publication on or after July 1, 2025.

Speaker: Dr. Danielle Maurici-Pollock

Practicing Open Research: Graduate Student Workshop

📅 10/21/2025

🕚 11:00 am - 12:00 pm

📍 Zimmerman Library Graduate Commons, Register for the event

This session is specifically designed for graduate students! We’ll tackle practices that support you creating research that is findable, accessible, and replicable:

  • Registering studies before you begin
  • Federal mandates for open research
  • Tips for contacting researchers for data sharing
  • Re-using other study’s data
  • Planning for Open Access publishing
  • Quick Tools-for-You run through

Speaker: Dr. Margo Gustina

Open Access Month: Free Book Fair

📅 10/21/2025-10/22/2025

🕚 11:00 am - 1:00 pm

📍 Smith Plaza, Between Zimmerman and the SUB

Join UNM OER and the Friends of the Public Library for a free book giveaway! The Friends will bring a wide selection of books for UNM students to take home.

Along with free books, you’ll also learn about the power of Open Access (OA) and Open Educational Resources (OER):

  • Open Access (OA) makes research freely available online without paywalls or subscription fees. OA promotes scholarly growth by removing barriers, allowing knowledge to be shared widely and equitably.
  • Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that anyone can freely use, adapt, and share. OER lower costs for students, expand access to course materials, and give educators the flexibility to customize content.

Stop by to:

  • Pick up a free book to enjoy.
  • Learn how OA and OER are transforming access to knowledge.
  • Explore how open licensing makes it possible to reuse and remix educational and research materials.
  • Get details on other Open Access Week events happening across campus.

Opening the Canon: Copyright, Access, and Creativity

Part of International Open Access Month 2025

📅 10/22/2025 & 10/23/2025

🕖 7:00 pm

📍 Guild Cinema

As part of International Open Access Week, the public is invited to “Opening the Canon: Copyright, Access, and Creativity,” a lively evening of film, conversation, and discovery on October 22nd and 23rd at the Guild Cinema in Albuquerque at 7:00 pm each day. On October 22nd, Bryan Konefsky of Basement Films will guide a discussion on copyright, open access, creativity, and the art of working within a canon. He will also introduce the three films:

  • Steamboat Willie: Mickey Mouse’s first sound cartoon, newly in the public domain.
  • Steamboat Bill, Jr. starting Buster Keaton, the film that inspired Disney’s steamboat adventure.
  • Citizen Mickey by Salise Hughes: A Basement Films gem reimagining the mouse we all know.

On the 23rd, the event will include only a showing of the three films, no discussion. This event will explore how works move from private ownership into the public domain, and what that means for creators, educators, and the public. The event will conclude with an open Q&A session with Konefsky. This event is free and open to the public. Opening the Canon is created through the support of the New Mexico Open Educational Resources Consortium, University Libraries, New Mexico Library Association, and Basement Films, which has been around for 35 years supporting underrepresented forms of media.

International Open Access Month is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research. Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder.

Open Access Week offers a chance to connect with the global momentum of openly sharing knowledge.

Open Science Framework: Research Management & Repository

📅 10/24/2025

🕚 11:00 am - 12:00 pm

📍 Zimmerman Library B30, Register for the session

Track progress! Publish study registrations! Share protocols, instruments, data, and markdown files! Collaborate! Show the research products beyond your final publications in a single cross-study linked platform that ties your work from study design through pre-pub all in one place. Workshop participants will:

  • Tour the platform
  • See how to create a research home that is both useful for managing multiple components AND engaging to people learning more about your work
  • Discuss small shifts to make open and transparent research a regular part of your research practice

Speaker: Dr. Margo Gustina 

Data Horror Stories

📅 10/29/2025

🕛 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

📍 Zoom, Register for the session

Disappearing data! Unreadable ancient files! Ordinary researchers losing hours of their time trapped in data nightmares! This Halloween week, join UNM HSLIC's Research Data Specialist for an hour of spine-tingling, hair-raising data horror stories...and some advice to prevent them from happening to you. Feel free to lurk or bring some data horror stories of your own to share. Beware: This session is not for the faint of heart.

Speaker: Dr. Danielle Maurici-Pollock

3rd Annual Open Textbook Program (OTP)

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:

The deadline to submit applications for the second annual Open Textbook Pilot Program is October 1, 2025. 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 2026.

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

Open Educational Resource (OER) Development Programs 

The College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences is excited to provide support for interested faculty and instructors who would like to research and develop Open Educational Resources for use in higher education. 

Transitioning to Open: A Case Study in General Chemistry OER Adoption

Join us for Transitioning to Open: A Case Study in General Chemistry OER Adoption – Learn from UNM’s Experience, a webinar showcasing how UNM’s Chemistry faculty successfully transitioned their General Chemistry courses to OpenStax textbooks through a Department of Education OER grant. This session will provide insights into OER adoption, supplementary lab materials, and key takeaways for faculty considering open resources.


📅 Friday, April 25th, 2025
⏰ 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
🌐 Online; Zoom

📝 Register here!

NMOER Consortium Workshop Series, Spring 2025

Throughout the Spring 2025 semester, the New Mexico OER Consortium is offering training and support for faculty and instructors interested in developing open and accessible curriculum for their courses. OER are teaching, learning, and research materials that are freely available to the public or released under an open license, allowing for their use, modification, and sharing.

Though the sessions will be spread out through the entire Spring 2025 semester, they are broken into 3 themes: Proactive Accessibility OER Series 2025, OER Creator Workshops 2025, and Open Education Week 2025. The Proactive Accessibility OER Series will equip faculty with skills to develop materials that respond to the needs of a wide range of learners with different abilities and life experiences.

The OER Creator Series will help faculty begin researching and developing materials to shift toward more open educational practices. And during the global event of Open Education Week, March 3–7, 2025, we will raise awareness of open education with events that can benefit both educators and students alike. This workshop series is open to educators across New Mexico to help spread awareness of open education and its best practices. 

Session Titles 

UNM Tech Days 2025

The New Mexico OER Consortium (NMOER), piloted through the College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences (CULLS), is excited to participate in Tech Days at UNM. 

Tech Days is a free event that offers no-cost sessions, discussions, and hands-on demos of current and future technological innovations at the University. This year during Tech Days, faculty who are actively integrating Open Educational Resources into their courses will present on their projects and curriculum during an OER Track at Tech Days on April 17th and April 18th.

The OER Track will be hybrid so that post-secondary educators from across the state can tune in and learn about the innovative ways that their peers across the state are integrating free resources into their courses. Faculty who teach not only courses within the state’s General Education Curriculum but also other undergraduate and graduate courses will be on hand to present their materials that have been vetted, adopted, adapted, and created with New Mexico’s student population as the primary audience. See more in this UNM News press release.

Event Registration is now closed.

Open Education Week 2025
03/03/2025 through 03/07/2025

It’s that time of year again... Open Education Week (OE Week)! Where OER programs across the world engage in activities to teach about open educational resources and all things open. The annual celebration, OE Week, is an opportunity for actively sharing and learning about the latest achievements in Open Education worldwide.

Celebrate Open Education Week at UNM with the New Mexico OER Consortium. We have organized a slate of exciting and informative events to raise awareness of current initiatives and inspire visions of how OER could develop across the UNM system and across New Mexico.

Tuesday, March 04, 2025

Open Education Week: Open Textbook Review Workshop

📍 Online | Sign-up required

Explore open textbook solutions for your pedagogical needs by attending a free workshop facilitated by the Open Education Network. Higher education faculty in New Mexico are invited to a workshop where you will learn about open textbooks, where to find them, and the criteria that the OEN uses to evaluate the textbooks in their Open Textbook Library. Participants who attend the workshop will be eligible to review an open textbook and receive a $200 stipend. These OEN workshops have resulted in a 45% adoption rate by participating faculty.

Wednesday, March 05, 2025

Open Mind and Open Education Workshop & Activity

📍 Zimmerman Library, B30 | No sign-up required

For Students and Faculty: Learn about OER, play a Creative Commons matching game, do crafts with old textbooks, and enjoy some snacks! We will talk about the basics of Open Educational Resources, benefits and examples of OER, open licenses and Creative Commons.

Thursday, March 06, 2025

Open Mind and Open Education Workshop & Activity

📍 Zimmerman Library, Frank Waters Room 105 | No sign-up required

For Students and Faculty: Learn about OER, play a Creative Commons matching game, do crafts with old textbooks, and enjoy some snacks! We will talk about the basics of Open Educational Resources, benefits and examples of OER, open licenses and Creative Commons.

Friday, March 07, 2025

NMOER Event: Finding and Evaluating Open Materials for Accessibility

📍 Online | Sign-up required

Continuing the Proactive Accessibility OER Series 2025, this workshop helps faculty finalize their OER projects by focusing on sourcing and evaluating open materials for accessibility. Participants will learn how to identify and assess openly licensed resources for critical accessibility features such as screen reader compatibility, proper tagging, and alt text. Faculty will also explore strategies for adapting and customizing materials to meet accessibility standards while adhering to licensing requirements. This session will equip attendees with a comprehensive understanding of how to integrate accessible practices into their projects and finalize materials that are inclusive, effective, and ready for publication or distribution.