Open Oregon Educational Resources is a state-funded initiative to support open education efforts across Oregon’s community colleges and public universities. Open Oregon provides grants and training to support instructors in creating, adapting, or adopting open textbooks and other open course materials.
Highlights from the 2025 Open Oregon Institutional Impact Report include:
- A total of 170 faculty and staff members at PSU have taken part in Open Oregon initiatives since 2015, such as attending conferences, joining Equity and Open Education cohorts, and participating in OER course redesigns and grant projects.
- Over the past 10 years, statewide OER grants at PSU have saved PSU students an estimated $500,999.
Open Oregon Grant-Funded Projects at PSU
PSU faculty members recently contributed to Open Oregon’s Open Oregon Open Curriculum Projects to develop openly licensed course materials with an equity lens in Human Development and Family Studies, Sociology, and Criminal Justice. Contributing authors from PSU for this project include Curt Sobolewski and Mauri Matsuda, Criminology and Criminal Justice; Felipe Ferreira and Kate Burrows, Sociology; and Rebeca Petean, Human Development and Family Studies.
In recent years, several PSU College of Education faculty members who teach courses for preservice teachers have participated in Open Oregon cohorts to redesign their courses, using OER with an equity lens. Participants have included Dot McElhone, Shanté Stuart McQueen, Ingrid Anderson, Samuel Sennott, and Torrey Kulow. In Open Oregon’s OERCommons, you can find completed Preservice Teachers OER projects, including the following projects by PSU authors:
- Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy Unit Design Project by Dot McElhone
- An Expanded Elementary Mathematics Methods Course: Developing Anti-Bias/Anti-Racist Math Education through Equity-Based Instructional Practices by Shanté Stuart McQueen
In addition, PSU Psychology instructor Christopher Allen received 2025-27 OER grant funding from Open Oregon, for a total award of $29,700. As part of this grant-funded project, which will be supported by the PSU Library and the Office of Academic Innovation, Christopher Allen will be conducting interviews, adding multimedia, and adapting the open textbook, Introduction to Psychology as a Social Science.
Open Education Support at PSU
Would you like to explore open education further? Check out PSU’s OER LibGuide, or get in touch! Julia Stone (julia.stone@pdx.edu), Open Scholarship Librarian at PSU Library, leads the Library’s open education project support and is available for consultations on finding, adapting, and using OER.
Faculty members who are interested in creating, adapting, or adopting OER for use in their courses are encouraged to visit PSU’s OER LibGuide. Those who are interested in open education can also reach out to Julia Stone (julia.stone@pdx.edu), Open Scholarship Librarian at PSU Library. Julia provides open education project support and serves as Open Oregon’s point person at PSU.