LibGuides: Affordable Course Materials and Open Educational Resources (OER): Home

Learn More About OER

SPARC OER Factsheet

Can Open Education Save Students $1 Billion
As the Open Education Conference approaches this October, it’s time to look back and respond to the challenge we issued five years ago: has the OER movement saved students more than $1 billion?
AffordablCollege Textbook Act Reintroduced in Congress
Washington, D.C. (April 4, 2019) — SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to broaden access to knowledge, today applauded the reintroduction of the Affordable College Textbook Act in the U.S. Congress. The bill aims to make higher education more affordable for students by expanding the use and awareness of open educational resources (OER) — high quality academic materials that can be freely downloaded, edited and shared to better serve all students.

GUIDEBOOK TO RESEARCH ON OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES ADOPTION

GUIDEBOOK TO OER
The Open Textbook Network is committed to measuring the impact that open textbooks have on teaching and learning. Thanks to the Open Education Group, we are sharing the Guidebook to Research on Open Educational Resources Adoption. It was developed to support local research initiatives on open textbook efficacy. Supplemental materials to this Guidebook are available through the Open Ed

Indiana U Releases Free Guide to E-Text Programs

E-Texts 101: A practical Guide
Indiana University and Unizin have published an ebook on getting started with inclusive access initiatives, for those who are in the early stages.

Indiana U Releases Free Guide to E-Text Programs
Indiana University is sharing lessons learned from its eTexts program in a free e-book titled eTexts 101: A Practical Guide. The book tells the story of IU's own e-text experience, the economics of e-texts and campus bookstores, accessibility issues, communication strategies and more. It also includes perspectives from publishers and other universities that have worked through similar initiatives.

What Are Open Educational Resources (OER)?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are "teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others."

From The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

OER include digital learning materials such as:

Learn more: What is OER?

Why Use OER?

There are many reasons instructors might want to use OER:

Free and Legal to Use, Improve and Share

Save time and energy by adapting or revising resources that have already been creating
Tailoring educational resources to the specific content for your course
Expands opportunities for interdisciplinary teaching and learning by allowing instructors to integrate and revise multiple educational resources
Redefines "traditional" learning by often incorporating multi-media or scenario-based education
Allows instructor to go beyond the confines of "teaching to the book"

Network and Collaborate with Peers

Access to educational resources that have already been "peer reviewed" by other experts in your field
Many resources have a review or annotation feature so instructors have more in-depth knowledge of the resource and its quality quickly
Makes learning and teaching more collaborative

Lower Educational Cost and Improve Access to Information

Reduces the cost of course materials, particularly textbooks so that all students have access and aren't as financially burdened
Find and access information instantly on virtually any topic, and can access with various devices.
Gives learners the option of looking at course content openly before enrolling.
Can reduce the students bear, sometimes increasing graduation and retention rates

Surveys and Reports

A recent Florida Virtual Survey<http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/pdf/2016_Florida_Student_Textbook_Survey.pdf> of over 22,000 students found that 66.5% of students did not purchase the required textbook / course materials solely due to cost. Just yesterday, Inside Higher Ed<https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/07/16/measuring-impact-oer-university-georgia?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=e3f54e4e71-DNU_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-e3f54e4e71-197454733&mc_cid=e3f54e4e71&mc_eid=857a64156f> shared how the University of Georgia has saved students 3.2 million in textbook cost since 2013 by utilizing OER. In addition, they found that switching to OER increased the number of A and A-minus grades students received by 5.50 percent and 7.73 percent, respectively. The number of students who withdrew or were awarded D or F grades (known as the DFW rate) fell by 2.68 percent.

Michelle Early

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Subjects: Classical Studies, Diversity, French, Greek, Languages (Modern), Latin, Multicultural Studies, Peace Studies, Social Work, Sociology, Spanish, Women, Gender, and Sexuality (LBGTQ included)

Affordable Learning OhioLINK

Affordable Learning OhioLINK
Affordable Learning is OhioLINK's series of initiatives to lower the cost of college for Ohio higher education students by assisting our member libraries and campuses in identifying strategies for Open and Affordable Learning textbook and course material adoption, and helping locate statewide shareable library materials as well as open educational resources that are no cost or lower cost to students.
2019 Movers and Shakers: Textbook Dealmakers
As leaders of the 118-member academic library consortium OhioLINK, Gwen Evans and Amy Pawlowski negotiated first-of-their-kind statewide electronic textbook pricing agreements with six publishers—John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill Education, Pearson, Macmillan Learning, Cengage, and SAGE—which resulted in an estimated $39.7 million annual savings for students attending higher education institutions in Ohio.

Affordable Learning Options and Initiatives

Affordable Learning Options and Initiatives
Things You Can Start Doing Today

Content Contributor Grant
Apply to be a content contributor, course reviewer, or librarian for the 2nd cohort of the OER Innovation Grant

What are the cost savings if Xavier’s First Year Seminar courses were zero cost courses
In the FYS Core 3a student learning outcomes -- Employing effective library research and information literacy skills -- there is an inherent relationship between the faculty and their librarian liaison.
What can librarians do to assist faculty – (beyond teaching library instruction and research skills)?