Open education resources have benefits for instructors and students, including accessibility via the internet and affordability as compared to traditional textbooks. The digital format of OER also offers innovations not possible with hard-copy texts, including multimedia content and user interaction, that can increase student learning. Despite these advantages and increased awareness of OER in the education field, their adoption in U.S. higher education remains limited.
A decline in emphasis on teaching natural history in public schools means many American citizens — children and adults — know little about the part of the Earth they inhabit. To residents of Arizona’s southwest corner, the Sonoran Desert around them remains relatively unknown and unappreciated. The 16th-largest desert in the world has one of the most varied biomes of any desert on the planet. It includes the saguaro cactus (found nowhere but the Sonoran) and the only population of wild jaguars in the U.S.
Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and local school partners are co-designing new staffing models and deploying teams of educators. This Next Education Workforce initiative was created to make schooling more individualized for students, and the job of teaching more sustainable for educators. These models have the potential to improve outcomes for both students and educators in the short-term and, over time, lead to a robust education workforce.
"Building Leadership for Change through School Immersion" is an initiative of the Ministry of Education of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Its aim is to strengthen the values, skills, knowledge and attitudes of teachers, counselors and principals through university-led structured immersion in high-performing, English-speaking K–12 school systems.