UA Little Rock Builds on Momentum for Open Educational Resources
As the University of Arkansas at Little Rock continues to expand affordable educational opportunities, a national higher education organization is recognizing an approach that benefits both students’ budgets and their academic success.
The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) recently recognized open educational resources (OER) as a high-impact practice (HIP), a designation reserved for educational strategies proven to deliver significant benefits for student success and engagement.
OER are freely available educational materials, including textbooks, lesson plans, and digital resources, that carry open licenses. These licenses allow educators to adapt and share content, providing students with free access to course materials.
According to the AAC&U study, institutions that implemented OER saw lower course withdrawal rates, more students earning A grades, and improved time-to-completion, particularly among students who took longer than four years to earn a degree. Researchers also found that OER strengthens student engagement, persistence, and success while helping reduce one of the largest out-of-pocket expenses students face. Because OER can be adapted and updated, instructors can tailor course materials to their classes and present concepts in ways that better meet the needs of different learners.
Although OER was only recently designated as a HIP nationally, many UA Little Rock faculty members have already been creating and using these resources for years.
“We have faculty out there who are already creating and sharing these kinds of materials,” said Emily Bowie, academic success librarian. “They just weren’t aware of the verbiage to recognize that what they’re doing is OER.”
Over the past year, Ottenheimer Library staff have identified how UA Little Rock faculty are already creating and using OER while researching successful open education initiatives at peer institutions. Those efforts are helping shape a long-term strategy to support instructors who want to adopt, adapt, or create OER while building a sustainable program that can continue growing over time.
“We’re looking at other R2 institutions to see what kinds of programs they’re doing when it relates to OER and open access publishing,” Bowie said. “Whatever initiative we end up creating is uniquely suited to here and will hopefully be more sustainable in the long run.”
UA Little Rock is one of 140 U.S. universities designated as an R2 institution by the Carnegie Foundation and the American Council on Education, recognizing universities that award at least 20 research/scholarship doctoral degrees annually and have at least $5 million in research expenditures.
As the library works with faculty to identify and implement OER, it is also expanding the resources available to support those efforts — one of its newest initiatives is the launch of an institutional repository, ScholarHub@UALittleRock, this fall. The digital repository will provide a free, publicly accessible home for work created by UA Little Rock faculty and students, including research, dissertations, and open educational resources. By making those materials openly available, the repository will expand the reach of the university’s work, making it accessible to educators, researchers, students, and others around the world. The platform will also provide usage data showing how often resources are viewed, downloaded, and used, giving the university new insight into the impact of its OER.
As UA Little Rock continues to expand its OER initiatives, the university is also bringing together educators across Arkansas to advance conversations around open education. On October 16, UA Little Rock will host the Open Arkansas 2026 Conference, where educators, librarians, instructional designers, and other partners will explore how OER projects and strategies can grow into sustainable, large-scale practices.
“This year’s conference is especially exciting because its central location makes it more accessible to educators from across Arkansas, and we’re thrilled to welcome Amy Hofer, director of Open Oregon Educational Resources, as our keynote speaker,” said Dr. Tiffani Tijerina, assistant professor of rhetoric and writing. “We invited her because we hope to learn from Oregon’s success in building a statewide OER consortium as we work toward creating one here in Arkansas.”
Bowie said the growing recognition of OER presents an opportunity for UA Little Rock to continue expanding affordable learning while fostering collaboration among faculty across campus. As more instructors adopt, adapt, and create open educational resources, students can benefit from lower costs, immediate access to course materials, and learning resources designed to meet a variety of educational needs.
“There’s space for us to be a leader in this state, building on that affordable, high-impact learning,” Bowie said. “The more we build toward that, the more institutional support we have, and the more opportunities we create for students to succeed.”