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Overview
Building on Achieve's open educational resources (OER) work, seven states in Achieve’s American Diploma Project (ADP) Network —
California, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, Washington, and Wisconsin—agreed to work together in Achieve’s OER Institute. The goal of OER Institute is to bring these states together to discuss issues and policy barriers surrounding using OER in college- and career-ready standards implementation. This ongoing, year-long effort has included webinars for states to discuss these issues, such as the use of open licensing and measures of quality, as well as an in-person convening in November 2012 for state teams to share current progress in using OER and engage in strategic planning activities to use OER in their transition to new standards. Below is the OER Planning Framework and presentation slides used as part of the November 2012 in-person convening.

OER Institute Planning Framework

OER Institute Presentation Slides

OER Institute Policy Brief
The policy brief  State Support for Open Educational Resources: Key Findings from Achieve's OER Institute describes the OER Institute initiative and provides appendices that detail each of the seven OER Institute state’s efforts, including three potential areas for cross-state collaboration to support the use of OER:

  • Establishing commonalities in defining quality
  • Sharing quality, standards-aligned resources
  • Sharing metadata about quality resources

The brief also describes four key findings to date from the OER Institute:

  • States face a number of common challenges and barriers to implementation, including a lack of knowledge about OER and uncertainty about the quality of resources available online.
  • Experts from multiple sectors, including standards, curriculum and technology, must work together to use OER successfully in CCSS implementation.
  • States must develop a common understanding of processes for measuring quality and vetting resources.
  • States must assess their technology and capacity needs to implement technology-based innovations.

Achieve will be continuing this work through providing virtual and in-person convenings for OER Institute states, providing state-specific assistance to implement plans related to OER and hosting OER materials review sessions.

Key Findings from Achieve's OER Institute

State Profile Updates
In the short time since publishing this policy brief, states have made significant progress in advancing the use of OER in classrooms. The field of OER is fast changing and focused on innovation, and Achieve thought it appropriate to compile an additional volume of state profiles to share more broadly the OER-focused efforts being made across some of the OER Institute states. 

OER Institute State Profile Updates