Many community colleges, universities, and even entire state systems have launched open educational resources (OER) initiatives. For most, the focus has been on saving students money by replacing expensive textbooks with openly licensed, “free” textbooks. Students have indeed saved millions of dollars already. Motivated by these first movers, the University System of New Hampshire (USNH) has launched a similar initiative, but rather than focusing on textbooks alone, the system has decided to support an Open Education initiative that includes OER, open pedagogy and open access. USNH enrolls 34,000 students, and consists of four public institutions: Granite State College, Keene State College, Plymouth State University, and the University of New Hampshire.  To our knowledge, we are the first 4-year state university system in the country to implement an Open Education initiative. We believe that embracing and supporting all three components of open education provides a platform for transforming our educational experiences into truly student-centered learning opportunities.  This presentation will explain how we built support for this initiative, describe how faculty shaped the direction of the initiative and share results from the first phase of implementation.

Presentation slides.