New Policy Report: Findings of the OER Course Marking Landscape Analysis Survey

After conducting a survey earlier this year on Open Educational Resources (OER) Course Marking, MHEC has released its latest policy report on the findings. The report is part of the ongoing collaboration of the National Consortium of Open Educational Resources (NCOER). Building off this work MHEC and the other regional compacts wanted to explore course marking related to OER and no-/low-cost course materials. Course marking is when institutions create indicators in course catalogs that let students know the cost of their textbooks and learning materials at the time of registration so they can anticipate the full cost of postsecondary attendance for a semester.     

The survey included questions related to institutions’ and systems’ course marking processes, data validation processes, use of course marking data, technology use, and motivations for course marking of OER. The authors conclude that institutions and systems are successfully implementing OER course marking processes and using the data in ways that help students and the institutions and systems make data-informed decisions.

OER are teaching, learning, or research resources that are offered freely to users in at least one form and that either reside in the public domain or have been released under an open copyright license that allows for its free use, reuse, modification, and sharing with attribution. Source. SPARC.