Special thanks to Jennifer Rogers for her contributions to this guide, in particular her selections for OER Courses, OER Textbooks, and OER Primary Sources.
“Open Educational Resources 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 repurposing by others. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.” Hewlett Foundation.
Faculty are encouraged to find, adapt and remix OER materials for use as course materials at SDSU.
The high cost of textbooks is negatively impacting student access, success, and completion.
66.6% of students did not purchase the required textbook
37.6% of students earned a poor grade
19.8% of students failed a course
47.6% of students occasionally or frequently take fewer courses
45.5% of students did not register for a course
26.1% of students dropped a course
20.7% of students withdrew from a course
Library Liaisons are discipline subject specialists assigned to each college or department. Faculty can contact their library liaison for assistance with finding OER and ZNC materials. The Electronic Resources Librarian can also assist faculty with finding OER and NC materials. Facutly continuing to use commercial textbooks can contact the Head of Collection Development to request the library purchase a textbook copy to put on course reserves.
Montezuma Publishing has several services to assist faculty and students using OER. For free they will reformat OER materials to meet course needs, such as pulling out desired sections from a longer text into a single PDF. Fee services include transforming OER materials into digital readers with interactive functionality. Montezuma Publishing can also do print-on-demand for OER textbooks for students who prefer to read offline.
Instructional Technology Services supports faculty use of both Blackboard and Canvas Learning Management Systems. You can contact the ITS Fit Center for help with making OER and NC materials work within the LMS. The Electronic Resources Librarian can help you find the correct permalink for any ebook or electronic article you with to put in the LMS. More information about permalinks is available in the Journal Articles section.
