At the end of April, the Library had the privilege of hosting April Hathcock, Scholarly Communications Librarian at Bobst Library in NY as she visited NYU Shanghai. April generously shared her expertise in copyright, publishing, and scholarly communications. In addition to speaking to our students, faculty and staff on issues in copyright and publishing in academia, April introduced faculty and staff to Affordable Course Content (ACC) and Open Educational Resources (OER) in two workshops. April has had a very active role in the Support for ACC and OER Committee in NY, helping faculty understand OER/ACC and identify resources and strategies for their existing and new courses.
In these workshops, April explained the difference between Affordable Course Content and Open Educational Resources, and what NYU Libraries can do to support faculty who are interested in using these materials in their own instruction:
- Affordable Course Content or ACC is course material that is provided to students for their learning at little to no cost.
- Open Educational Resources or OER are materials that are created for public use, reuse, and modification. The OER movement is part of a broader effort in international higher education to make learning materials more affordable and accessible for students.
- Besides helping students saving thousands of RMB, using ACC and OER may make textbooks and readings readily available for students before a semester starts, and could make the learning experience more interactive.
April also demonstrated several multi-disciplinary open textbook repositories that provide access to open textbooks and other educational resources, including: The Open Textbook Library and OpenStax. Both are reputable OER sources which contain open access peer-reviewed academic textbooks.
To learn more about ACC and OER, please visit this research guide on the topic: http://guides.nyu.edu/OER. For faculty and staff who were unable to attend these workshops, the Library is happy to meet with you one-on-one to discuss these resources. E-mail shanghai.library@nyu.edu to talk to a librarian.
