The Power of OER with Nearpod & MERLOT:  Tools For Diversity, Equity, and Inclusiveness Initiatives
Channel: MERLOTPlace
Date: 2022-03-28

Presenters:
- Gerry Hanley, Executive Director, MERLOT-SkillsCommons
- Jane Moore, Editor, MERLOT Teacher Education Board
- Amy Young, Higher Education Regional Manager, Nearpod

Faculty and institutions need to be empowered to:
- Customize and contextualize their course content so it becomes more relevant to the diverse students in their classes.
- Design learning activities that provide their students inclusive ways to demonstrate their acquisition of skills and knowledge. 
- Ensure all students have equitable access to learning resources and opportunities so all students can succeed.

Faculty’s and institution’s understanding of their local student community's needs and context is required for the customization of curriculum, along with the ability to revise and remix the typically generic course content available to make it more relevant for their students.   

Openly licensed educational content has been reused, retained, and redistributed extensively but the remixing and revising of OER is far from a prevalent practice.   Tools to remix and revise OER need to be very usable and powerful to produce learning solutions that are customized to students’ learning needs and the teaching objectives of local communities.   

MERLOT’s Affordable Learning Solutions Initiative is an institutional strategy to reduce the cost of course materials AND improve student learning outcomes. OER can be an essential ingredient for improving affordability; what is still needed is a learning platform that can take the OER and engage the students in active learning of the content.

MERLOT has partnered with Nearpod to develop the combination of OER services and an easy-to-use and effective platform to revise and remix OER to create affordable learning solutions customized for the learning needs of your students.  The webinar will present the collaborative strategy and services by MERLOT and Nearpod and will help you plan ways to apply this collaborative strategy within your own institution.