Textbook affordability has emerged as a potential barrier to academic success nationally. Data shows that as textbook prices rise, average student expenditures for these textbooks does not, indicating that more and more students are simply choosing not to purchase the required texts.  Putting the textbook on reserve on the library will help somewhat, but the limitations to access are significant (open hours, competition for materials, costs). To address this issue, the WCSU library has been encouraging faculty #GoOpen and explore Open Educational Resources (OER), which are educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve and redistribute.

In practical terms, OER range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation. Variations of OER concepts can also include mixing open resources with library-licensed content. The Alternate Textbook Project at Temple University encourages faculty to “mix resources from existing textbooks, licensed library collections, primary research content, open textbooks, multimedia or faculty’s self-authored material. What the final product looks like and how it is used is entirely up to the individual faculty member, but librarians are available to help with identifying and organizing resources.”

Thanks to generous funding from the Davis Foundation and the WCSU SGA, the Library is expanding our Open Educational Resource (OER) grant program we started last year (see flyer below). So if you think you are ready to #GoOpen, or you just want to learn more about it, reach out to your friendly librarians! We are here to help.