Author: Melissa Foge

Digital Scholar Bytes: Open Education Week 2026

Posted on by Melissa Foge

Banner for OEWeek 2026 that has illustrated people celebrating and networking together on projects at different tables
March 2-6, 2026 is the 15th annual Open Education Week! Open Education is a movement to make learning free, accessible, and flexible for everyone. The goal is to remove barriers to high quality learning and resources through sharing, adapting, and building upon the work that others have done. Open Education Week serves as a global town square to learn more about open education by connecting with others at one of the many events happening this week.

One of the main benefits of approaching education through an open lens is the ability to make learning more accessible. Let’s take a closer look at some of those different aspects of accessibility.

Price

Almost half of students receive some sort of financial aid which often does not cover course materials or fees, and while students do often look for used copies, older editions, or other cost cutting options, a 2023 study showed that over half of students have taken fewer courses or not registered for a specific course because of the cost of course materials (Mowreader, 2024). Providing free materials allows students to take courses without an additional financial hoop to try and jump through.

Perpetuity

As a part being open and freely available online, students will have access to the materials immediately and will be able to refer back to them long after the class has ended when they would otherwise have sold back a traditional textbook. See our Open Educational Resources guide to get started looking for open textbooks and other course materials.

Flexibility

Creative Commons LogoThe licenses on open materials allow you to remix and reuse the materials to adapt to the specifics of your course. You can piece together different materials and add the most relevant examples for your students. You can learn more about the specifics of Creative Commons Licenses here.

Digital Accessibility

An additional benefit of digital open materials is that it is easy to build in accessibility for students with disabilities from the start. Some simple items to keep in mind while making or finding materials to ensure they are as accessible as possible for everyone include:

  • Videos should include closed captions or transcripts
  • Images should include alt text or captions describing the image
  • Using headings in Word and other similar programs to allow students to navigate through the documents easily
  • Use high color contrast for text and images
  • Links should be hyperlinks rather than the long string of the URL from the address bar

Learn more about digital accessibility from this series of videos from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the Web Accessibility Initiative.

References
ADA National Network. (2022). OCR web accessibility video series. https://adata.org/ocr-videos

Creative Commons. (n.d.). About CC Licenses. https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/

Henry, S.L. (2026, February 3). Introduction to web accessibility. W3C Web Accessibility Initiative. https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-intro/

Mowreader, A. (2024, August 26). Cost of course materials impacts student success. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/student-success/health-wellness/2024/08/26/college-students-avoid-courses-high-textbook-costs

Open Education Global. (n.d.). Open Education Week 2026. https://oeweek.oeglobal.org/

A Trip to the Moon: Documentaries on Lunar Exploration

Posted on by Melissa Foge

The far side of the Moon with a portion of the Orion spacecraft in the foreground and a crescent of the Earth visible rising above the Moon in the background
The Earth rising behind the Moon captured by the Orion spacecraft on the Artemis I mission.
Humanity is heading back to the Moon with NASA’s Artemis missions, so let’s take this opportunity to look back at how we’ve studied and adventured to the Moon in the past. Apollo and Artemis are twins in Greek mythology, so the name Artemis was chosen because these missions are building on the original knowledge that we gained from the original Apollo Moon missions. Learn more about the Artemis missions, the astronauts assigned, and the planned experiments and observations in store from NASA’s website here.

For All Mankind – The Apollo Space Missions

Title image for "For All Mankind"Sorting through nearly one hundred hours of film and sound recordings recovered from NASA – shot between December 1968 and November 1972, in the heyday of the space programme – director Al Rienart has pieced together a seamless documentary commemorating the 24 men who travelled to the moon as the entire US watched in awe. -Kanopy

Using NASA footage from Apollo 7 through Apollo 17, this documentary gives an overview of the crewed Apollo missions.

JPL and the Space Age

Title image for "JPL"JPL and the Space Age uses rare archival footage and interviews with many of JPL’s pioneering engineers and scientists in the retelling of many of humanity’s first steps out into the cosmos. -Kanopy

This series was created by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory itself and gives insight into not only the astronauts involved with space exploration, but also the engineers and scientists. The different episodes focus on different missions, from the early days at NASA, to exploring the Moon, Mars, and Saturn, the Voyager probes, and more.

First to the Moon: The Journey of Apollo 8

Title image for "First to the Moon"In 1968, NASA sent three men farther and faster than anyone had gone before. This is the story of how Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders changed history on the flight of Apollo 8. -Kanopy

This documentary tells us the story of Apollo 8, the first mission where astronauts left the Earth’s orbit. Like the upcoming Artemis II mission, they orbited around the moon, but didn’t land. This mission also gave us the infamous Earthrise photo taken by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968.

8 Days: To the Moon and Back

Title image for "8 Days"Seamlessly blending Apollo 11 mission audio featuring conversations between Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins with news footage, NASA archive, and stunning CGI, this film is a stunning recreation of the first moon landing. -Kanopy

It is not until the Artemis III mission currently scheduled for 2028 that humans will once again step foot on the Moon, but with this documentary you can look back at the first mission that put humanity on the surface of the Moon.

Artemis I: The Documentary

Title image for "Artemis I"Through Artemis, NASA will once again land humans on the Moon. But before that can happen, we must first launch our Space Launch System (SLS) rocket—the most powerful rocket we’ve ever built—and Orion spacecraft on a flight test around the Moon. -Kanopy

The first Artemis mission took place at the end of 2022, it was an uncrewed flyby of the Moon to test the Orion spacecraft and other technologies before sending astronauts on future missions, take a look at all that was accomplished with this documentary.

While in Kanopy explore the other documentaries available such as Listen to the Universe, which highlights how scientists not only create images of our universe, but also “sonifications” that translate the data into sound that can be listened to and learned from and The Color of Space, which takes a look at seven current and former Black astronauts as they trained for their missions. Kanopy also has films available such as the once believed lost A Trip to the Moon, Georges Méliès’ 1902 science fiction adventure inspired by Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon.

Research & Instruction: Gale Business: Insights

Posted on by Melissa Foge

Gale Business: Insights logo

While researching on business and marketing topics, it is helpful to get a scope of the field with articles that experts in the field are writing, as well as looking into specific financial information about various companies and industries. With the Gale Business: Insights database you can explore company and industry information via financial statements, case studies and articles from academic journals, trade magazines, news outlets and more.

Business Reports

screenshot of Apple's company profile from Gale Business: Insights

You can use the advanced search to find articles written by experts in the field from business trade and academic journals like you would in SearchBox from the Library’s homepage. You can also find business specific news articles to keep up to date with the latest current events and trends.

In addition to articles, Business: Insights also has profiles of financial information for public companies with an overview of the company, SWOT analysis, and financial data and ratios.

screenshot of the Electronic Computer Manufacturing industry profile from Gale Business: Insights

The industry profiles give you an overview of the industry, reports on the industry and the top companies by revenue.

Business: Insights also allows you to compare up to 3 companies, industries, or countries/territories to see changes over time.

screenshot from Gale Business: Insights comparing Apple & Microsoft's revenue over time

Digital Scholar Bytes: Happy Open Access Week!

Posted on by Melissa Foge

The International Open Access Week open lock logo against a sky of stars with the words "Open Access Week 2025 October 20-26, 2025 #OAWeek"

October 20-26, 2025 is International Open Access Week and a time to discuss Open Access (OA) to information. Scholarly publishing is largely still behind paywalls, but the open access movement has greatly expanded the amount of research that is freely available online for everyone to read, use, and re-use.

Levels of Open Access

There are a few paths to OA publishing:

  • Green means that the work was published in an institutional or disciplinary open access repository available to the public at either the time of publication or at a later date
  • Gold means that the work was published into an open access journal or conference proceedings
  • Diamond means that not only has the work been published into an open access journal, but there also weren’t any article processing charges for the authors

There are also variations upon these paths, including the author publishing the work to the author’s own website or posting preprints that have not yet undergone peer review, or post-prints where the work has gone through peer review and been accepted for publication, but not yet published.

Who Owns Our Knowledge?

Open Access Week open lock icon against stars with the words "Who owns our knowledge?"

The theme of this year’s Open Access Week is “Who Owns Our Knowledge?,” which gives us an opportunity to think about not only where and how information is published, but who has a right to access and use that information. How can communities reassert control over the knowledge they produce?

In 2022, the White House released a memo decreeing that any federally funded research should be made immediately freely available to the public to accelerate data sharing and scientific innovation. This has necessitated that federal agencies update their open access policies to ensure this equal access to data and research.

With the explosion of artificial intelligence tools in recent years, in particular generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Midjourney, there has been a large discussion of ownership and access to information. AI tools that are built on datasets and language models need very large amounts of information to create the training sets from which they analyze and predict outcomes. There have been several lawsuits against AI companies over the alleged scrapping of copyrighted information. Recently Anthropic AI has settled with a group of authors for $1.5 billion for the estimated 500,000 books covered by the settlement. In academia, we are also seeing the development of AI tools for research that will also bring into question the ownership of research being done on our campuses. With other lawsuits ongoing, where AI tools overlap with ownership of information and fair use is still being determined.

Open Access with Mullen Library

Screenshot of the article "Open Access - or Open Science?" in SearchBox with the icons marking it as Peer Reviewed and Open Access

In addition to our catalog and databases we subscribe to, we also include several open access databases such as the Directory of Open Access Journals into our main search, SearchBox. This facilitates getting a larger pool of the research available when first searching on a topic to get a sense of all the scholarship available.

We also have a research guide on Open Educational Resources with links to databases with open access research and other open media.

Be sure to also check out our events page for information on our upcoming Digital Scholarship Workshops. You can also see all the events worldwide for Open Access Week here.

Resources
Association of Research Libraries. (2025). Public access to federally funded research and government information. https://www.arl.org/public-access-policies/

Open Access Network. (2025, June 10). Green, gold, and diamond Open Access. https://open-access.network/en/information/open-access-primers/green-and-gold

SPARC. (2025). International Open Access Week 2025. https://www.openaccessweek.org/

Veltman, C. (2025, September 5). Anthropic settles with authors in first-of-its-kind AI copyright infringement lawsuit. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2025/09/05/nx-s1-5529404/anthropic-settlement-authors-copyright-ai

Digital Scholar Bytes: Welcome to Open Education Week!

Posted on by Melissa Foge

Open Education Week (OEWeek) is from March 3-7 and celebrates open education around the globe!OEWeek2025 Logo

Open Education is a movement to make learning free, accessible, and flexible for everyone. The goal is to remove barriers to high quality learning and resources through sharing, adapting, and building upon the work that others have done. Open education includes:

  • Open access – research that is published and available for all freely online
  • Open educational resources (OER) – free learning materials that are published with licenses that allow instructors to remix and adapt them to suit their needs
  • Open pedagogy – a teaching approach that invites students to be a part of the information creation process
  • Massive open online courses (MOOCs) – online courses accessible to anyone with a computer and access to the internet
  • And more!

See the events page to learn about open education work being done around the world.

How Students Can Get Involved

Closer to home, the Washington Research Library Consortium’s Textbook Affordability Working Group is working to increase the use of OER and reduce textbook costs to our students. We’ve done outreach to partner with faculty, helped provide stipends to increase OER use, and hosted workshops to teach about OER, how to find them, and how to use and adapt them into courses.
Our next workshop is upcoming on March 19th at Noon to discuss student opinions of OER use and their benefits, register on our events page. Student opinions workshop flyer

Please help us by taking this 5 question survey to tell us about how much you spend on textbooks.

You can also get involved with the Open Textbook Alliance. The Open Textbook Alliance is a nationwide group connecting student government leaders that are working to increase the use of open textbooks across college campuses. In addition to open textbooks, their current campaigns include increasing the transparency of textbook costs and reducing automatic textbook billing. Visit their website to find out all of the ways that you connect with them and take action.

Research & Instruction: Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall

Posted on by Melissa Foge

For musicians, it can be invaluable to not only listen to recordings while studying, but also to watch performances. We have several options to watch performances, but today I am going to highlight the Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall.

Screenshot of the homepage of the Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall database

The Digital Concert Hall provides streaming, high definition video of the Berlin Philharmonic’s performances. The library includes hundreds of concerts, covering all periods of music, as well as artist interviews and documentaries. New videos are made available each week, and more than forty performances are streamed live every year. The Digital Concert Hall also provides an app to make streaming more convenient on mobile devices.

 

ConcertsScreenshot of previews of 4 films available in the Digital Concert Hall

The Digital Concert Hall archive of recordings includes over 750 concert videos from six decades available to watch and also has live streams of the orchestra’s concerts from the Philharmonie Berlin, the Europakonzert, and the Waldbühne venues. You can search for specific performances, view curated playlists, and browse by specific works, composers, soloists, periods, and more.

Films

In addition to concerts, there are films, documentaries, and artist portraits available to watch. The films and documentaries tell you the unique history of the Berliner Philharmoniker from the founding to the present day and take you behind the scenes of tours and special events. The artist profiles highlight musicians and their instruments as they give you insight to their relationships to music both on and off stage.

Interviews

Learn from guests of the Berliner Philharmoniker, composers, soloists, and conductors, themselves as they introduce concert programs and discuss their work in conversation.

 

The first time you follow the link to the Digital Concert Hall, click on the “Start Institutional Access” link and sign up with your CUA email to get started!

Screenshot of the login page for the Digital Concert Hall

Digital Scholar Bytes: Open Education Week

Posted on by Melissa Foge

Open Education Week (March 4-8) is “an annual celebration and opportunity for those working in Open Education to actively share their achievements and learn about what others are achieving worldwide.” Open Education is a part of the larger open access or open source movement whose goal is to create more access to and collaboration with information.

A tablet leaned against a stack of books

Open Educational Resources (OER) are free or openly accessible learning materials, which includes textbooks, lesson plans, videos, and even full courses. They are written by faculty and subject matter experts. The licenses on OER allows you the flexibility to adapt and edit the materials to suit your course and learning outcomes for your students. With the immediate access provided by OER, students can get started using the materials right from the start of class and refer back to the material long after they may have sold back a traditional textbook.

Increasing Student Retention and Engagement

Open Pedagogy is a way of looking at pedagogy and courses that would invite students into the production and creation of information and not just the consumption of it. Open Pedagogy makes use of Open Access and OER materials and looks at assignments where students add to the knowledge openly available by creating or editing course material or editing Wikipedia pages. Learn more about Open Pedagogy from the Open Pedagogy Notebook.

See all the events that are a part of Open Education Week here.

Open Education at Catholic University

Screenshot of the filters on the search results page of SearchBox with the "Open Access" filter selected

The Library’s SearchBox searches our catalog and many databases at once, including Open Access databases such as the Open Textbook Library and the newly added LibreTexts for OER and the Directory of Open Access Journals for Open Scholarship. To see Open Access materials specifically in your search results, use the filters in the left column of the search results page.

To find more OER and other openly available media, see our OER Research Guide. This guide has more information about Open Education and recommendations of more places to locate and start using OER for your courses. Please also don’t hesitate to reach out to your subject librarian for assistance.

Additionally Open@WRLC works to investigate and determine how the Washington Research Library Consortium can incentivize and support faculty in the creation and adaptation of Open Textbooks. You can see upcoming workshops and recordings of past events to learn how to get involved in reviewing Open Textbooks and learn from fellow faculty members in how they are making use of OER in their courses.

The deadline for the 2024 Open@WRLC Course Transformation stipend has been extended until Friday, March 8, 2024 11:59. Awardees will receive $2000 to convert a course from traditional, commercial textbooks to OER for either the Fall 2024 or Spring 2025 semester. Get more information and apply at open.wrlc.org/grant.

 

 

Research & Instruction: Online Teaching Resources

Posted on by Melissa Foge

New to teaching online? The first thing to learn is that it is different than in-person teaching and instructors who follow the same playbook as they did for in-person teaching risk not connecting with their students. Become a pro at online teaching and start by exploring some available resources.

Intro to Library Research

Screenshot of the landing page of the Intro to Library Research tutorial

Introducing our updated Intro to Library Research tutorial. This tutorial includes visuals and quizzes and covers the entire research process from developing a topic and keywords, to search strategies, to evaluating and using resources. Each section focuses on a different aspect of searching and can be used to refresh skills or teach them from the beginning.

Center for Teaching Excellence Guide to Online Teaching

Upgrade your online teaching skills with our latest certificate, tailored for new and experienced educators. This self-paced training covers essential topics like course design, student engagement, and effective assessment, all in just 2-4 hours.

Key Highlights:

  • Experience the new Cardinal Learn by Brightspace.
  • Earn a certificate to add to your teaching portfolio.
  • Not about technical platform training, but focused on online teaching pedagogy.

Enrollment Steps:

  • Log in to Brightspace with your CUA credentials.
  • Go to the “Discover” tab.
  • Find “How to Teach Online” and click “Enroll.”
LinkedIn Learning Online Teaching

You can also learn more about teaching online from LinkedIn Learning using self paced videos and courses, such as the new course Learning to Teach Online from Oliver Schinkten. While there see if there are other courses or videos that can supplement your courses and learn how to use them in your classes.

OER Workshops and Stipend

Posted on by Melissa Foge

Open Educational Resources or OER are free or openly accessible materials such as textbooks, lesson plans, videos, and even full courses. Using no-cost or low-cost materials advances educational equity and directly impacts student retention and academic success. 

Learn more about finding and using OER at a virtual session in collaboration with the Center for Teaching Excellence next week on Tuesday, February 13th at Noon, register here to get more information.

Tablet in front of a stack of books

Additionally, as a member of the Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC), you are invited to apply for a 2024 Open@WRLC Course Transformation stipend. Awardees will receive $2000 to convert a course from traditional, commercial textbooks to Open Educational Resources (OER) for either the Fall 2024 or Spring 2025 semester.

The stipend program is designed to promote a community of advocates among partnering institutions, create incentive to add to the availability of open course materials, and provide monetary support to acknowledge the time and effort required for curriculum redesign when adopting OER. Apply at open.wrlc.org/grant. Proposals are due March 4.

Learn more at the information sessions on Wednesday, February 14 at 1:00pm or Thursday, February 22, 2024 at 1:00pm. The website also provides details about the program, a timeline, and additional resources.

WRLC_Open_2024

New Exhibit: Deity

Posted on by Melissa Foge

On display now in the May Gallery for Spring 2024 is Deity, showcasing the work of Hadrian Mendoza, a potter and lecturer in CU’s Department of Art. Mendoza is a graduate of Mary Washington College (VA) and studied at the Corcoran School of Art (DC). His work is in the permanent collections of museums in Cambodia, China, Korea, Japan, and the Philippines.

Bulol 1 by Hadrian Mendoza
Bulol 1 by Hadrian Mendoza

The 19 pieces in this exhibit, created between 2009 and 2023, explore subjects such as the Bulol rice terrace god from the Philippines, balance in sculpture, and functional objects that include vases, tea sets, and sake sets.

“Since discovering the material of clay, I have always been inspired by cultural objects found in the Philippines during precolonial times. I felt that it somehow connected me to my past, and it was a way to channel energy through my work. This exhibition displays a collection of pieces inspired by the Bulol rice terrace god, a cultural icon that originates in the Ifugao region of northern Luzon, Philippines. The idols are carved wooden figures that are believed to protect the Ifugao rice terraces and bring an abundance of crop yield. I have always weaved this theme into my works as they have transformed through the years, in which I have recreated them as my own distinct interpretations. The faces of these pieces evoke a mute voice and stoic gaze, with minimalist gestures and a vibrant aura.”

Come visit and view this collection in person in Mullen Library and learn more about Hadrian Mendoza’s art at https://hadrianmendoza.com/