The reduction in costs for students is a major benefit of OERs but is not the only one. OER course materials are much more flexible than commercial textbooks, allowing the instructor to customize the materials to meet their specific student learning outcomes and their diverse student community.
Some advantages of OERs include:
Access: All students have immediate access to their course materials and retain access after the course has ended.
Adaptability: You can start with existing OER material and modify it to tailor the content for your specific course. You can start with existing OER material and modify it to tailor the content for your specific course or you can combine multiple existing OERs into a new work.
Scalability: OERs are easy to distribute widely with little or no cost.
Enhancement of regular course content: For example, multimedia material such as videos can accompany text. Presenting information in multiple formats may help students to learn the material more easily.
Quick Circulation: Information may be disseminated rapidly (especially when compared to information published in textbooks or journals, which may take months or even years to become available). Quick availability of material may increase the timeliness and/or relevance of the material being presented.
Continually Improved Resources: Unlike textbooks and other static sources of information, OERs can be improved quickly through direct editing by users or through solicitation and incorporation of user feedback. Instructors can take an existing OER, adapt it for a class, and make the modified OER available for others to use.
Open Educational Resources (OERs) are teaching, learning and research materials that are in the public domain or have an open license (see above for a more detailed definition).
Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) is a class/degree/pathway that does not pass any cost for textbooks on to the student.
While the two are often used interchangeably, they each describe different aspects of course materials. ZTC describes only the cost of the materials passed on to students, while OER describes the licensing of the course materials. The image below summarizes the intersections between these two, with the vertical axis being the license (OER or not OER) and the horizontal axis being the cost (ZTC or not ZTC). Let’s consider a few examples:
OER and ZTC (Green): Usually, courses that use an OER textbook are also ZTC, because they use a digital textbook that is free to access. Often a print version of the book can also be sold at the bookstore, but it is optional.
OER and not ZTC (Blue): In some cases, students need to purchase a printed copy of the OER or purchase access to an openly licensed homework platform. For example, STEM courses with a lab often require a printed lab manual that students use to collect and analyze their data.
Copyrighted and ZTC (Yellow): The internet is full of resources that are copyrighted, but free to access (e.g., most of the videos on YouTube). You can use these in your course for free, but they are not OER. Additionally, the library or school may purchase access to copyrighted materials that you can use in your courses. These materials are free to the student, ZTC, but not OER.
Copyrighted and not ZTC (Gray): Traditional course textbooks and materials fall in this category. The cost of the materials is passed on to the student and the materials are not openly licensed.
OER and ZTC by Wiley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Consider serving on the OER Advisory Committee or joining us for our monthly meetings on the first Tuesday of every month at 3:00pm in AC2 276.
We currently have a team of faculty working with the AAC&U Institute on OER to increase OER awareness and build a sustainable OER presence on campus. If you are interested in joining, please contact our Team Lead, Derek Dormedy (derek.dormedy@cloviscollege.edu).
If you are using an OER textbook for your course, you still need to adopt the book through the bookstore when textbook adoptions are sent out. Please choose “Only OER material is used for this course” for your adoption. Faculty are encouraged to add the name of the textbook with a link in the “Notes” section during textbook adoption. This allows students to see which textbook they need when searching on the bookstore’s website, providing them access before classes start.
Instructions for adopting OER materials as textbooks
It is best practice to include in your syllabus how students can order a printed copy of a digital OER. If your OER textbook is available for purchase on Amazon or through the publisher's website (e.g. OpenStax), please include this information in your syllabus. Our campus bookstore will not pre-order print copies of a digital OER textbook, as they do not tend to sell. If your OER textbook does not have print copies available online, then students can order print copies of your OER through the campus bookstore. To initiate this process, please contact the bookstore before the term starts to have your OER approved for printing and then the bookstore will print as needed. Black and white copies are very cheap at the bookstore, but color printing costs significantly more.
Most OER textbooks and materials are shared under a Creative Commons License. Creative Commons (CC) Licenses are an extension of copyright that empowers creators to decide how they want their works to be used by others, including allowing for the 5 Rs discussed above. In contrast, copyrighted works can only be used if you have permission or your use falls under the limitations and exceptions of copyright. All Creative Commons licenses require Attribution, ensuring that the authors always receive credit for their work. As you become a user of OERs, it is important to include the correct attributions for each OER that you might use.
Interested in learning more? The resources below from the OER Advisory Committee delve deeper into the types of CC licenses and how to use them.
Creative Commons Licenses
Adapting Works from the Creative Commons
Additional Resources
Creative Commons Textbook
Best Practices for Attributions
Creative Commons FAQs
