Faculty Resources

"Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation." (UNESCO, 2018).

OERs can be used in many parts of a course, from the primary textbook to supplemental readings and videos.

There are other resources that students can use at no cost, such as ebooks in Plough Library databases. OERs, however, are usually designed for classroom use, and allow editing and modification by instructors.

In principle, evaluating an OER for use in a course is just like evaluating a traditional resource. However, it will be like evaluating a new title rather than a new edition of a familiar title, since the publisher may be unfamiliar, or the title hasn't been been refined through numerous editions.

Bear in mind, too, that one of the chief attractions of an OER to your students is that it's free, unless they desire a bound edition.

Questions to ask yourself:

• If there is vital material in the book you currently use, can it be included in the lectures or added as supplemental material?
• Would reducing student costs and increasing student use of the material be worth the inconvenience of adjusting a syllabus?

OER textbooks aren't just free textbooks (great as that is).

• You can revise them, "remix" them, cut and paste content, and more.
• OER, with their open licenses, give instructors a lot of freedom to rethink how texts are presented, engaged with, and adapted to a class's particular requirements.
• Since OER are free to students, you can pick and choose from several options without feeling like you're assigning seven textbooks. If you look around at OER choices, you might find surprising contrasts.
  • For instance, the US History textbook at OpenStax is a fairly straightforward textbook, which stands nicely alongside the most popular traditional options. Meanwhile, The American Yawp (hosted and published by Stanford University Press) is primarily written by younger scholars, and tends to be more radical. Contrasting the two is easier with two free texts than with traditional material.
• Over time, an OER can become almost a brand-new textbook as you refine it and the course. There are a lot of tools available for editing and remixing books, as detailed in links from the University of Illinois.

Adding an OER to Canvas, or distributing it to your class in some other way, is very simple.

The most straightforward way is to simply provide a link to the textbook's page, like this:

In this class, we will be using Anatomy and Physiology by Betts, et al.. It is a free textbook available from OpenStax here.

Many OER providers also have Canvas integration for their materials. OpenStax, for instance, invites faculty to register when they adopt a textbook, which unlocks many instructor features, including Canvas "cartridges" which can be loaded into your course (see the Digital Instruction designers for details).

Canvas Commons

Many OER providers have content available in Canvas Commons. Chris Long shows how to create a course using OpenStax content from the Commons.