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Open and Affordable Educational Resources

This guide primarily supports UMD instructors with creating and using open educational resources (OER), affordable course materials, and open pedagogy.

What About Other "Open"s?

Open education efforts focus specifically on teaching and curriculum as part of the broader landscape of open knowledge. The multiple interrelated open movements challenge systemic barriers to information access and scholarly communications. Proponents of Open frame educational and research outputs as public goods, arguing that sharing and collaboration foster higher-quality end products, advance global research goals, and enhance humanity's ability to address grand challenges.

In addition to open education, open knowledge efforts include open access, open data, open science, and open source software, among others.

A large circle labeled "Open Knowledge" contains five smaller circles, each labeled with a major type of open knowledge: Open Access, Open Data, Open Education, Open Source Software, and Open Science.

Open at UMD

Open Research & Education Support at UMD Libraries

Many librarians and staff at the UMD Libraries actively support open research, education, and collections. The people listed in this chart have "open" in their job titles and/or major job duties.

Division Collection Strategies & Services (CSS) Research & Academic Services (RAS) Research & Academic Services (RAS)
Department Open Scholarship Services (OSS) Research Teaching & Learning (RTL) Research Teaching & Learning (RTL)
Unit(s) - Research Education and Humanities & Social Sciences Librarians STEM Library
People
  • Michelle Wilson (Head of OSS)
  • Terry Owen (Scholarly Communications Librarian)
  • Lindsay Inge Carpenter (Head of Research Education)
  • Sarah Clinton-McCausland (Open Education Librarian; Humanities & Social Sciences Librarian)
Open Science/STEM Librarians:
  • Matthew Cain
  • Sarah Weiss
  • Leah DiCiesare
Open Focus Areas
  • Teaching/learning contexts: Openly-published and/or affordable course materials (incl. textbooks) and curriculum
  • Open pedagogical practices
  • Pressbooks
  • Copyright/licensing
  • Open approaches in STEM research and teaching (data, scholarship. software)
  • Copyright/licensing

Publishing, Access, and Contract Terms (PACT) Working Group

Learn More About Open