Open Educational Resources
Textbook costs continue to rise, and you can be a part of the solution by incorporating low-cost and no-cost materials into your courses with Open Educational Resources.
The costs of college textbooks continues to rise at an incredible rate (4x the rate of inflation). Textbook inflation has risen more than medical expenses, college tuition, and housing, which greatly impacts student learning, retention, course completion, and time to graduation. Research shows that students take fewer courses and are forced to drop or withdraw from courses due to the high cost of textbooks. Other students report accepting poor or failing grades because they cannot afford to buy required course materials.
Open Educational Resources (or OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that reside in the public domain or have been released with an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. OER include fully fleshed-out courses (like Canvas shells or MOOCs), supplementary course materials (like lab notebooks, word lists, quizzes, etc.), individual modules, completed textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software and coding, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge. Anything that can be published can be used as an OER.
What Does "Open" Mean in OER?
Open in OER means the user can retain (make and own a copy), reuse (use in a wide range of ways), revise (adapt, modify, and improve), remix (combine two or more), and redistribute (share with others). These are known as the 5Rs. Note that this is different from resources where you have free access but the resource has all rights reserved (such as article, journal, and ebooks subscriptions purchased through the library).
The goal of using OER is not only saving students money by replacing expensive commercial textbooks, it is also about improving student success (increased GPAs, higher retention rates, fewer cases of DFUW) and instructional innovation.
Getting started
Making the switch to OER from traditional resources may seem daunting, but the Sherratt Library is here to help. Learn more about how you can begin finding and using OERs in your classroom.
If you are interested in any part of the OER process from brainstorming to creating your own, please schedule a consultation with Chris Younkin, Scholarly Communications Librarian (chrisyounkin@suu.edu).
Library support for OER
At the Sherratt Library, we offer services to support faculty who want to incorporate OER into their classrooms.
- Learn about licensing and Creative Commons
- View OER materials for General Education courses at SUU
OER Grant Program
In many instances, the high cost of textbooks have become a significant barrier to student success. The goal of the Sherratt Library's OER Grant Program is to support the adoption, adaptation, and creation of open educational resources (OER) by SUU faculty/instructors and encourage their use at SUU to positively impact students and incentivize pedagogical innovation. Faculty/instructors can apply for up to $900 to implement OER in their courses. This grant is broken down into three tiers:
Tier 1: Adopt, $300- Adopting an OER means replacing a text book with an existing OER or set of OERs, without alteration to the OER/s. This grant tier compensates the instructor for the time it takes to find the OER/s and make adjustments to course content accordingly.
Tier 2: Adapt, $600- Adapting one or more OER involves the same process as adopting, but with the added work it takes to make changes to the OER/s. Examples include customizing text to reflect the experiences of SUU students, adding relevant examples or stories, and adding new images, charts, figures, data, etc. Adapting may also include combining parts of multiple OERs into one new resource. (Note: to qualify for this tier, adaptations should be significant.)
Tier 3: Create, $900- Creating a new OER often takes a significant amount of time to develop, test, and refine. To qualify for this tier, instructors create an OER that serves as the primary textbook or set of learning materials, and covers material that is not already covered by an existing OER (otherwise, adaptation or adoption will be consider better options). This tier does allow for some adaptation from existing OERs, but to a limited extent.
Please fill out the Sherratt Library OER Grant Application in as much detail as possible in the space provided. More than one person may apply for a single grant. In these cases, grant recipients should decide how to divide funds.
Priority will be given to high enrollment General Education courses. Applicants may submit as often as they choose; however, priority will be given to those who have not utilized OER in the past.
NOTE: Applications will be reviewed on the first Monday of each month when school is in session. Applications must be filled out completely to be considered. Completing this application does not guarantee that the applicant will receive a grant. Please contact Scholarly Communication Librarian, Chris Younkin at chrisyounkin@suu.edu with questions.