March 2, 2021
The New England Board of Higher Education strongly believes that all students deserve unfettered access to their learning materials on the first day of class, regardless of their financial situation. That’s why NEBHE launched its Open Education program in 2019 to assist in and build upon coordinated state strategies, enhance and promote effective policy frameworks and share best practices to accelerate the integration of open education and open educational resources (OER) in the Northeast. We work closely with our public and independent institutions, states and regional compact partners to continually learn how we can best step up to support the ever-changing landscape of open education.
An open textbook is just like a traditional, commercial textbook in terms of content, but it has a license that makes it free for anyone to access, redistribute and retain in perpetuity, and in many cases revise and remix the content to make a customized copy. The author, or the copyright holder, gives you explicit permission to use an open textbook just by giving it an open license.
Open education is the umbrella term that describes the movement to bring our educational system into the modern world by using technology to provide resources, tools, and practices that are free of financial, legal, or technical barriers and can be retained, reused, remixed, revised and redistributed in the digital environment for more affordable, accessible and effective teaching and learning.
Open Education:
Practitioners and supporters of open education believe that students should have access to high-quality educational material and resources to provide a more affordable and accessible education experience. The common term that represents the products of open education is open educational resources (OER).
Select a tab below to learn more.
OER are high-quality teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, adaptation and redistribution by others. OER can be print or digital.
OER allow students to retain their learning content in perpetuity, serving students and learners of all ages and stages. This is important for students who may have to retake a course or who are enrolled in a sequence (ex. Biology I and Biology II), where having access to the previous semester’s book is essential.
An open license permits creators or resources to retain copyright, while simultaneously allowing others to participate what are known as the “5R” permissions:
This material is an adaptation of Defining the “Open” in Open Content and Open Educational Resources, which was originally written by David Wiley and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at http://opencontent.org/definition/.
Open access is the movement to call on scholars to share their work in a manner that is free and immediately available in addition to the right to use these articles in the digital environment. This movement is to increase the impact of our research by publishing their peer reviewed work through journals that do not have paywalls.
While the open education community emerged to address the rising cost of textbooks, practitioners quickly realized that openly licensed materials allow for innovative, learner-centric pedagogies. Educators are engaging their students in content creation and seeing the impact of their learning through this “open pedagogy.” Even in the open education community, the term open pedagogy takes on several different definitions depending on who you ask, but the basics are built upon the foundational principles of emancipatory, constructionist and constructivist pedagogies. To learn more about what several practitioners are doing and how they define it, check out the Open Pedagogy Notebook.
OER Creation or Adaptation Program
The application period opens March 2, 2026, and closes at 5 p.m. Eastern on April 3, 2026. NEBHE Grantmaking Portal – OER Creation or Adaptation Application
Click here to view and download the Call for Proposals for the OER Creation or Adaptation program.
Please note that this document is for informational purposes only. Only an online application submitted will be considered.
NEBHE’s regional approach to open education, with the generous support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, is to:
March 25-26, 2026
A virtual event for new and experienced OER advocates offering the opportunity to learn and share effective practices in awareness building, implementation, collaboration, strategy, and research.
Open Education in the Northeast
Lindsey Gwozdz, Fellow for Open Education and Annika Many, President & CEO EDU-PM, LLC
Released January 2026
While there is no one-size-fits-all policy, model or practice in Open Education, several New England states engaged in this work have identified and demonstrated practical approaches to successfully advance initiatives at both the state and institution level.
NEBHE plays a number of key leadership roles that make it unique in its ability to serve the New England states and to contribute to higher education issues nationally:
We work for and with any institution in New England to support open education efforts.
Select a state below to learn more.
Through Public Act 19-117, Connecticut established an OER Coordinating Council. In addition to supporting professional development for CT educators, this council administers an OER grant program that has saved CT students over $1.2 million. The council has also developed a Model Policy that provides guidelines about OER-related definitions, data collection, and presentation of information to students. CT is a #GoOpen state.
In 2011 the Maine Department of Education provided funding for Open Education Resource (OER) research through Title IID Enhancing Education Technology ARRA competitive grants. The grants supported the work of teacher research teams in the identification of high quality online educational resources that support and enhance classroom learning (mostly K-12). While Maine has not invested much in OER since 2011, the state’s grassroots efforts have been active and quickly expanding. State public university system and the private systems have OER initiatives, but they are not at the statewide level for postsecondary education. See report page 7.
In 2018–2019, UMass Amherst, Worcester State University, Holyoke Community College, and Northern Essex Community College led a collaborative project called “Massachusetts Open Education: Achieving Access for All,” funded by a Higher Education Innovation Fund grant. The project helped build OER capacity across the state and assessed the OER landscape at all public higher education institutions in Massachusetts. By gathering and analyzing data about current OER usage from each college to determine regional training needs, we were able to assist the project in achieving its goal of lowering overall costs for students, increasing student and faculty engagement, and ultimately improving college completion rates.
While New Hampshire has yet to pass any OER-related legislation, they have ongoing grassroots efforts such as the New Hampshire Open Education Consortium. In 2018, the University System of New Hampshire and the Community College System of New Hampshire began the Consortium effort to increase access and affordability around post-secondary education in our state. Today, the New Hampshire Open Education Consortium (NH Open) focuses on adopting and developing open textbooks to: drive down the real cost of college; improve learning outcomes, throughput and completion rates, and student engagement; improve higher education’s capacity to prepare graduates for the needs of a changing workforce; and develop 21st-century pedagogical approaches to serve our students and our state.
New Jersey enacted S 768, which requires institutions of higher education to develop an open textbook plan in consultation with faculty members at the institution. Each institution’s plan must be submitted to the Secretary of Higher Education with the intent to expand the use of open textbooks and commercial digital learning materials in order to achieve savings for students enrolled in the institution. The Virtual Academic Library Environment (VALE), a consortium of 50 New Jersey college and university libraries, LibraryLinkNJ (LLNJ), and the New Jersey State Library, hosts a statewide repository and referatorium collection developed for New Jersey higher education institutions for its educators to find and access materials. New Jersey has many participating #GoOpen Districts.
New York has passed various textbook affordability legislation over the years, but most notably is the yearly commitment of $4 million to SUNY and CUNY to provide open educational resources, including electronic-books, to students. Under the state’s direction, SUNY and CUNY use this funding to target high-enrollment courses, including general education, to maximize student savings. New York has many participating #GoOpen Districts, and leaders from SUNY and CUNY co-launched the collaborative Driving OER Sustainability for Student Success (DOERS3).
In 2017, Governor Raimondo executed a statewide Open Textbook Initiative that challenged the state’s higher education institutions to reduce college costs by saving students $5 million over five years using openly licensed textbooks. Over the course of its first three years in operation, the initiative has saved Rhode Island students $3.2 million, unfortunately in 2020 Governor Raimondo left the state to join the Biden Administration and the initiative ended. Funding for Rhode Island state schools to be Open Education Network members has continued through the Office of the Postsecondary Commissioner. The Higher Education Library Information Network (HELIN) is a consortium that aspires to collaboratively lead innovation in library and information services for the enhancement of higher education and learning. RI is a GoOpen state.
While no legislation has yet been presented in the state, in 2016, Vermont’s Agency of Education contracted OER Commons, an OER repository, to help the state’s education community collect, disseminate and catalog OER. #VTOpen resources support Pre K-12 curriculum and so far, 160 Vermont educators have contributed materials to the Hub. VT is a #GoOpen state.
OER are high-quality teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, adaptation and redistribution by others. OER can be print or digital.
Select a tab below to learn more.
NEBHE is committed to helping stakeholders understand the value of open education to provide students with equitable access to high-quality, low-cost postsecondary education instructional materials. Below is a list of curated resources to help practitioners new to OER and those in institutional leadership positions get started. If you’re looking for something specific, please contact our team at openeducationATnebheDOTorg.
MHEC – Creative Commons Collaboration
As part of a letter of intent between MHEC and Creative Commons (CC), CC will offer any community member affiliated with U.S. higher education regional compacts (MHEC, NEBHE, SREB, and WICHE) 15% off the cost of CC Certificate online course. To access your 15% discount, please go to the link above and follow the instructions.
You might be interested in this opportunity if you are:
Below you will find repositories that host open educational resources from a range of publishers and sources.
You can also search OASIS by subject.
You can find more repositories and a list of OER Publishers by following this link.
Find more research and publications from the four regional education compacts on the National Consortium for Open Educational Resources website –NCOER Publications
Lindsey Gwozdz, Fellow for Open Education
Released December 2020
While there is no one-size-fits-all policy, model or practice in Open Education, several New England states engaged in this work have identified and demonstrated practical approaches to successfully advance initiatives at both the state and institution level. This regional analysis shares exemplars and observations of sound practices observed by NEBHE Fellow for Open Education, Lindsey Gwozdz.
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Program Manager, Open Education
Fellow, Open Education
For any questions or for more information on open education at NEBHE, please reach out to our team by using the form below.