• VALE-NJ OER Certificate Program

    VALE OER Certificate Course – Spring 2022 Cohort

    In May-June, 2022, 13 participants from VALE member libraries completed the VALE OER Certificate course. Participants were grouped into four cohorts, each led by an OER Ambassador, to develop a multi-institutional collaborative project as they worked through the course material. Four openly-licensed projects were developed and added to OpenNJ, making them available for any institution to use and adapt based on their own local contexts. 

    Congratulations to our first cohort who earned certificates:

    Amanda Cowell The College of New Jersey Emerging Technologies & Dig. Projects Librarian
    Ana Fontoura Fairleigh Dickinson University University Librarian
    Anastacia McCloskey Ocean County College Digital Services Librarian
    Annie Chatterjee Essex County College Scholarly Communication Librarian
    Isabel Gray Camden County College Director, Library Services
    James Cox Hudson County Community Coll. Director of Patron Services
    Justin Savage Montclair State University Research and Reference Librarian
    Maria Deptula Berkeley College Director, Library Digital Services
    Michael D’Agostino Rowan College at Burlington Cnty Librarian
    Richard Kearney William Paterson University Electronic Resources Librarian
    Sharon Whitfield Rider University Electronic Resources & User Access Librarian
    Victoria Swanson Caldwell University Interim Library Director
    William Vincenti Montclair State University Librarian

    • VALE OER Ambassador Program

      For the period of May 1, 2021 to June 30, 2023, VALE has appointed three academic librarians to serve as OER Ambassadors. These OER Ambassadors will be responsible for leading a two year, coordinated, statewide effort to advance OER and textbook affordability in NJ higher education. This work will primarily be done by visiting institutions to provide workshops or to support local leaders in organizing workshops, participating in VALE’s OER listserv, and networking with librarians and faculty across institutions to form collaborative relationships around OER implementation.

      2021-2023 OER Ambassadors:
      Muhammad Hassan – Director Of Digital Information Resources, The Learning Commons (NTLC), Kean University
      Lily Todorinova – Undergraduate Experience Librarian, New Brunswick Libraries, Rutgers University
      Megan Dempsey, Instructional Services Librarian, Raritan Valley Community College (2020-2021)

      The ambassadors can be contacted at njoerambassadors@gmail.com

    Spring 2022 Collaborative Projects

    Metrics for Promoting Open Educational Resources and Assessing Their Impact

    Annie Chatterjee and Richard Kearney

    The purpose of this toolkit is to provide practical support to academic libraries seeking to play a campus-wide leadership role in Open Educational Resources (OER) advocacy and implementation through engagement with key stakeholder groups at their institutions. The toolkit identifies key metrics associated with OER for engagement with any strategic campus constituency – e.g., faculty, students, administrators, academic support units, the campus bookstore, etc. – to help make the case for OER implementation. These metrics, which can be tailored to any specific group, can support both advocacy for the adoption of OER and ongoing assessment of the impact of implementation at the course, departmental, college, or institution-wide level. Suggestions for data collection methods are provided for each metric. 

    Access the Metrics toolkit in OpenNJ

    Faculty OER Workshop Slide Deck

    James Cox, Amanda Cowell and Michael D’Agostino

    This template slide deck was created using information and strategies learned during the course and is intended to be adapted and customized by institutions using their own local context. It can be modified by librarians/library staff or other OER advocates at a campus and delivered to faculty to educate them about OER, the 5Rs, and the resources available to discover, modify and create OER.

    Access the slide deck in OpenNJ

    Administrator Outreach

    Maria Deptula, Victoria Swanson, Bill Vincenti, and Sharon Whitfield

    Finding financial support for OER initiatives is difficult at many higher education institutions. Faculty who would like to create or adopt OER require support from their institution. The purpose of this project is to find financial support for OER initiatives in higher education institutions. The project consists of a survey (which will be used to collect evidence of faculty needs), a workflow to find financial support at your campus, and a template to contact potential financial partners.

    Finding Financial Support for OER Initiatives in Higher Education

    OER Toolkit

    Ana Fontoura, Isabel Gray, Justin Savage

    The OER Toolkit Group (Group #1) will be developing a centralized link repository for OER guides, toolkits, FAQs, slide decks, videos, etc. We hope to house this repository on a webpage within the greater VALE website. Links to developed OER materials from institutions throughout the state will be included, and categorized on the webpage based on the overall theme of the material (Finding OER, Creating OER, Copyright/Licensing, Open Pedagogy, Discipline-Specific OER). The goal of this project is to centralize online materials that libraries and librarians from throughout New Jersey have created, such that a librarian developing OER-related materials at their own institution has one place they can look to find relevant examples to draw from. Project success could possibly be assessed by: a survey of those who use the site to get feedback, asking users to contribute with links to successful projects as a result of using the toolkit, keeping statistics on number of times the site was accessed/info downloaded, track the number of times the toolkit is shared/referenced. Furthermore, the idea is to eventually embed this object as a standing assignment within the VALE OER certificate program, with each new cohort being responsible for reviewing, adding, subtracting, and soliciting new links and materials for the repository.”

  • OpenNJ – OER Repository

    OpenNJ is a statewide repository and referatorium collection developed for New Jersey higher education institutions for its educators to find and access materials. This resource builds a community of practice around OER, and allows educators to learn about who uses what materials already, and what they might consider for their own use. Educators may submit their own items for consideration, which will be reviewed by the OpenNJ Advisory Committee.

    OpenNJ is intended to house:

    — Openly licensed or public domain OER adopted, adapted, and created for use in NJ

    — Open and affordable materials adopted, adapted, and created for use in NJ. These materials may include copyrighted material so an external URL may refer to the original source.

    — Full text items with links to native sources as appropriate.

  • OER Listserv

    The VALE OER Listserv serves as a clearinghouse of ideas for any number of aspects of Open Educational Resources. We seek your ideas, questions, strategies, experiences with, marketing tips and anything else OER related that you think is worthwhile for the community.

    There is no reason to limit ourselves to discussions about textbooks either. Learning objects, Libguides, other free resources — just bring it!