History and Status of OER at BYU (DRAFT)

While the social climate for a policy of openness at BYU is currently in its nascent and humble stages, it is quickly gaining momentum.  Despite the lack of an official university-wide “open” policy at BYU, a number of open activities are already well under way.  To date, a growing number of OERs and OER-like resources are already offered through various channels on campus.

BYU Independent Study is one example of an organizational effort to contribute to the OER community.  IS already offers free access to a selection of their courses for personal development.  Additionally, IS will soon launch a pilot program to offer several of their most popular courses to all BYU students and the general open education community in a manner similar to OER initiatives currently underway at other universities.

One more such organizational effort is based in the McKay School of Education, which recently launched a pilot program to openly publish (with voluntary instructor participation) several School of Education courses.

In addition to these organizational efforts, many BYU faculty have, as individuals, posted personally developed course content in various ways to make these resources available to the general public.  Some faculty post course syllabi, reading lists, and other course content on personal websites, while other faculty have even recorded their lectures and published them on well known online media repositories such as iTunes and YouTube.

While each of these efforts is a step in the direction of openness, the efforts are typically isolated from each other.  The real power behind these efforts will be found in strength of numbers and unity of purpose.  Because many departments and individuals at BYU are already beginning to contribute to the OER movement, there is a clear need for a central repository of BYU-produced OERs.  The Center for Teaching and Learning is clearly the organization with the resources and momentum toachieve such an undertaking.