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Affordable Course Materials : Electronic Textbooks and Open Educational Resources
A College Board survey reports that a student's average costs of textbooks for a year at a public four-year university is nearly $1,3. According to another study, two-thirds of students will skip using the textbook because of the cost. Meanwhile provosts challenge libraries prove their value. The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services has gathered its members' expertise to describe affordable text initiatives that promise improve student learning and student retention. Applying your library's expertise in licensing and faculty outreach to textbooks will create a more equitable learning experience for your students. Topics covered include: How LSU abandoned DDA, established requirements for e-books collections and boosted usage to 17, unique titles accessed. Surprising findings on the most expensive courses for textbook requirements. Building upon procedures and relationships of print reserves to develop e-book collections for courses. How to work productively with campus bookstores Results of library programs offering grants to faculty for developing course texts at UCLA, North Carolina State University, and University of Southern Missisissipi Measuring textbook usage through COUNTER reports or course reserve systems. Ideas for partnering with your campus instructional technology or distance ed units. Creating a textbook database for faculty to discover potential textbooks the library holds or could purchase in ebook format.
Authoring Open Textbooks
This guide is for faculty authors, librarians, project managers and others who are involved in the production of open textbooks in higher education and K-12. Content includes a checklist for getting started, publishing program case studies, textbook organization and elements, writing resources and an overview of useful tools.
Best Practices in Designing Courses with Open Educational Resources
Best Practices in Designing Courses with Open Educational Resources is a practical guide that assists faculty and institutions looking to adopt and implement OER and to foster meaningful, effective learning experiences through the course design process. Chapters loaded with tips, case examples, and guidance from practitioners advise readers through each step necessary for sustainable OER initiatives, from preliminary planning and course redesign through teaching, learning, and faculty development. Written by two authors with direct experience in training higher education professionals to use OER, this is a comprehensive resource for faculty, instructional designers, course developers, librarians, information technologists, and administrators hoping to rethink and refresh their curricula by moving beyond traditional textbooks. An authors' website expands the book with resources, templates, and examples of implementation models, including faculty development workshop OER materials that can be adopted by readers.
Faculty OER Toolkit
The Faculty OER Toolkit is an information resource about and guide to adapting and adopting Open Educational Resources. Included are definitions and examples, information about Creative Commons licensing, and tips on how to adapt and/or adopt OER for classroom use.
Interactive Open Educational Resources : A Guide to Finding, Choosing, and Using What's Out There to Transform College Teaching
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2014! Sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), this one-of-a-kind book demonstrates the best tools, resources, and techniques for discovering, selecting, and integrating interactive open educational resources (OERs) into the teaching and learning process. The author examines many of the best repositories and digital library websites for finding high quality materials, explaining in depth the best practices for effectively searching these repositories and the various methods for evaluating, selecting, and integrating the resources into the instructor's curriculum and course assignments, as well as the institution's learning management system.
Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know
This is a five-step guide for faculty, and those who support faculty, who want to modify an open textbook. Step-by-step instructions for importing and editing common open textbook file and platform types are included.
The OER Starter Kit
This starter kit has been created to provide instructors with an introduction to the use and creation of open educational resources (OER). The text is broken into five sections: Getting Started, Copyright, Finding OER, Teaching with OER, and Creating OER. Although some chapters contain more advanced content, the starter kit is primarily intended for users who are entirely new to Open Education.
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