Call for Submissions: OERs and the EAR

The Panorama, the digital arm of the Journal of the Early Republic, seeks contributors for a series on using Open Educational Resources (OERs) to teach the early American republic. Free, widely available, and readily accessible to students, OERs have been touted as an important component of educational equity. As one recent lit review noted, students in four-year public universities pay an average of $1200 a year for books and supplies. Over 50% of students, however, don’t purchase all required materials and 32% of those students receive a worse grade as a result. Driving down the cost of required materials by utilizing free resources ensures that students have equal access to materials from day one, which improves academic outcomes for all.

Do you have free resources you utilize in the classroom when teaching the early republic? Reputable OER textbooks, websites, blog posts, open access journals, and podcasts proliferate in the field and we want to know what—and how—you make use of these materials in your classes. Contributions could include reviews of OER texts; example lesson plans or discussion questions derived from a specific source; discussion of student reception; or ruminations on how free resources impact your pedagogy.

Posts should range from 500-1000 words, otherwise adhering to the guidelines for Pano posts. If interested, please submit to Emily Arendt at Emily.Arendt@msubillings.edu by December 10, 2024. Feel free to reach out to her with any questions or to discuss further.