Category Archives: DiSH

Celebrate Open Education Week 2024

During Open Education Week (March 4th – 8th) there are numerous opportunities to increase your knowledge of the exemplary Open Education work happening worldwide. Open Education is a way of sharing educational tools, resources, and practices without access barriers such as high financial costs or requisite credentials and affiliations. It is a philosophy surrounding readily available teaching materials and creating a strong community of support between educators.

A stipend program was established last year at UMass Dartmouth to fund the creation of openly licensed textbooks by members of our faculty. A virtual panel will be offered on March 6th by the Scholarly Communications Committee to showcase the textbooks that resulted from this program. The textbook projects are E-Commerce and E-Business by Shouhong Wang, A Guide to Analyzing Arguments in an Academic Setting by Jackie O’Dell, Joshua Botvin, and Yuan Zhang, and Women’s & Gender Studies by Catherine Gardner. Each author will give an overview of the book they created. All 3 books are freely available online through OER Commons, an online repository of openly licensed teaching material. This panel will also include a demo of OER Commons by Repository Coordinator Rachel Oleaga.

Register to reserve your spot!

Open Education Week 2023

It’s Spring Break, and this week (March 6-10) is also the observance of Open Education, an innovative and effective approach to teaching and learning. Open Education is the practice of incorporating tools and materials that are free of financial and technical barriers in the classroom. These resources can be shared and adapted in the digital environment. Examples include free, openly licensed textbooks from Openstax or OER Commons. Here are a few ways you can explore Open Education and get involved in OER this week and beyond:

  • Panel Discussion: Using Open Educational Resources – Thursday, March 9th, 3pm – 4:30pm
    MA Department of Higher Ed and MASSPIRG will partner on this virtual event to celebrate Open Education Week. Reach out to our UMD MASSPIRG Campus organizer by email for the link to join: UMass Dartmouth – MASSPIRG Students
  • Nominate a Faculty Member for the OER Olympics! – Do you know a faculty member who uses free materials in the classroom? All currently-enrolled undergraduate students, faculty, staff, and administrators at Massachusetts state colleges and universities can nominate Massachusetts public higher education employees who have had a compelling, positive impact on open educational resources (OER) either within or outside of their institution.

For questions about the hub in OER Commons or about Open Educational Resources (OER) more generally, please contact our Scholarly Communication Librarian.

New: Scholarly Workshop Series

The DiSH is offering a group of workshops targeting scholarly writing and research. Topics include ‘Formatting your Thesis‘, ‘Zotero Basics‘, ‘Getting the most out of Google Scholar‘ and ‘Publishing Basics’ (what to do with your thesis once you defend it).

As always, please register with our Scholarly Communication Librarian, Emma Wood