Open Education

Open Education at NEBHE

The New England Board of Higher Education strongly believes that all students deserve unfettered access to their learning materials on the first day of class, regardless of their ability to afford them. That’s why NEBHE launched its Open Education initiative in 2019 to assist in and build upon coordinated state strategies, enhance and promote effective policy frameworks and share best practices to ultimately accelerate the integration of open ed and open educational resources (OER) in the Northeast. We work closely with our public and independent institutions, states, and regional compact partners to continually learn how we can best step up to support the ever-changing landscape of open education.

What is Open Education and OER?

What is an open textbook and do I need permission to use it?

An open textbook is just like a traditional, commercial textbook in terms of content, but it has a license that makes it free for anyone to access, redistribute and retain in perpetuity, and in many cases revise and remix the content to make a customized copy. The author, or the copyright holder, gives you explicit permission to use an open textbook just by giving it an open license.

What We Do

NEBHE’s regional approach to open ed, with the generous support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, is to:

Promote the use of open ed and OER in regional postsecondary institutions
Collaborate with regional open ed advocates to identify gaps in regional capacity and develop solutions to state, regional, and institutional needs
Support postsecondary institutions with the development and implementation of no-cost course marking
Work alongside our regional compact counterparts, MHEC, WICHE, and SREB to tackle regional strategies to open ed

Who We Work With

NEBHE Open Education Advisory Committee

For more information please visit the Open Ed Advisory Committee page.

Regional Compacts

Midwestern Higher Education Compact – MHEC
Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education – WICHE
Southern Regional Education Board – SREB

SPARC

Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition is a non-profit advocacy organization that supports open systems for research and education that enable everyone, everywhere to access, contribute to, and benefit from the knowledge that shapes our world. For more information on their work, please visit their website.

DOERS3

The Driving OER Sustainability for Student Success (DOERS3) Collaborative is a group of 36 public higher education systems and statewide/provincewide organizations that are committed to supporting student success by promoting free, customizable open educational resources (OER). For more information on their work, please visit their website.

We work for and with any practitioner in New England to support their open education efforts.