OER and Open Textbooks

Overview

Many faculty are currently exploring options for free resources to support their online, hybrid and virtual teaching. One option to save students money is to use Open Educational Resources (OER), classes utilizing OER are often referred to as Zero Textbook Costs (ZTC). To learn more about the options available, we've assembled a shortlist of resource guides that may be useful. If you recommend any specific resources to add to this list or our emerging Open Pedagogy page, please let us know.

OER Updates

See the Open Educational Resources (OER) LibGuide, a guide to OER prepared by Pima Community College Librarians.
Visit the Open Education page at the Teaching & Learning Center (TLC) for more professional learning opportunities
Pima Open Digital Press is an option for all staff and faculty who want to adapt, revise or create OER (see more info below)
Register to attend OERizona's 7th annual AZ Regional OER Conference to network and learn from other practitioners about how they are using OER and open practices in the classroom

Why OER?

This video was produced at Iowa State by Abbey Elder, an Open Access & Scholarly Communication librarian. To learn more about OER, visit her YouTube channel playlist. This video is also embedded in the introduction to the OER Starter Kit at Boise State.

What Kind of Textbooks do Pima Students Want?

Watch this vine about the kinds of textbooks students want: Zero-Cost Textbooks.

This short video also served as a preview for our POEC 2021 student panel which included a brief focus on student experiences with textbooks and why they prefer ZTCs (Zero-Textbook-Cost courses).

Pima Open Digital Press

Adapt, Remix, Revise and Create OER

Pima is committed to lowering college costs for students which is why we are introducing Pima Open Digital Press as a tool to help faculty adopt OER in their classrooms. Pima Open Digital Press is a multimedia digital publishing platform powered by Pressbooks that allows users to easily adapt, remix, revise and create OER. You can now take OER shared by others, clone it into Pima Open Digital Press and make changes you want to meet your student and classroom needs. Can't find anything? Create your own multimedia textbook and integrate it into D2L. You can even have your students become creators of knowledge and share their voices.

What to lean more?

Check out some of these resources or put in an IT ticket request under Faculty Resources and Services.

What are the key terms related to emerging OER practices?

What is OER?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are free and publicly available teaching, learning, and research materials that reside in the public domain or are released under an open license. OER permits anyone to retain, remix, revise, reuse and redistribute the material. For example, an instructor could download the material, make their own edits, combine with other OER, make copies and share with others. Visit Boise State's OER Starter Kit.

What Other Emerging Terms Should I Be Aware of Related to OER?

"ZTC" refers to Zero-Textbook-Cost courses. In California, this is sometimes referred to as ZTC Degrees.
"Z-Degree" refers to graduation pathways that involve zero costs to students for textbooks or materials.
Open textbooks are free, public textbooks that are licensed under an open copyright license. Some institutions and organizations house public repositories of open textbooks.

Open Pedagogy includes any course design or teaching practices that advance student-generated learning materials intended for use by peers, future students or communities (i.e. service learning). These may be co-created, or co-constructed with educators. As David Wiley and others have noted, Open Pedagogy reduces the limitations of the "disposable assignment." Pima Community College is a participant in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Faculty Fellowship.

How to Find Possible OER Texts to Design or Supplement My Courses?

Where Might I Start With OER?

Contact Your OER Director! Chelsea James, cjames2@pima.edu
Visit the Open Educational Resources (OER) LibGuide a Pima Community College LibGuide.
Getting Started with OER at CCCOER. For further info, visit their video and slide-based OER Tutorials which include: Introduction to OER; Copyright & Open Licensing Applied; Searching for OER by discipline; Designing Courses with OER; and, Evaluating and selecting OER.
Find Open Textbooks at the BC Campus OpenEd page. Includes a listing of Academic/Career Success, Adult Basic Education, Art and Design, Biological/Physical Sciences, Business, Campus and Community Resources, Communication/Writing, Computer Science, Earth and Ocean Sciences, Education, Engineering, Health and Medical, Hospitality/Tourism, Humanities, Language Learning, Law/Criminal Justice, Math/Stats, Social Sciences,Support Resources,Trades
Explore the OER by Discipline Collection at Modesto Junior College. Includes a listing of Art, Biology, Chemistry, Child Development, Communication, Computer Graphics, Computer Science, Economics, English, Ethnic Studies, Guidance/College Success, Nursing & Applied Health & Psychology courses.
Valencia Writer: Comprehensive OER Textbooks

Skillscommons Workforce Development Digital Library (recommended by Kim Diezel)

OER Resource Repositories (also check the Open Educational Resources (OER) LibGuide)

Here are a few links relating to online repositories. To learn more, visit Ancilliary Content in their OER Starter Kit at Boise State University.

OpenStax. Rice University's peer-reviewed OER repository includes a searchable database of OER textbooks. To learn about OpenStax, visit their FAQs. As noted at this, page "Review the textbook online, and if you decide to use it in your class, let us know [at the OpenStax adoption page]. To access instructor-only materials, you can create an OpenStax account and request instructor access. Once we manually verify that you’re an instructor, you will have access to all instructor content. Include the textbook URL in your course materials, and from there, students can choose how they want to view the book." As noted at OpenStax textbook accessibility standards, "All [OpenStax] digital textbooks contain descriptive alt-text and table summaries and are designed to be easily navigable with assistive reading technologies .... The OpenStax web properties are currently undergoing upgrades to bring [OpenStax] in line with the WCAG Level AA compliance standards as well as Section 508 compliance." To learn more, visit OpenStax and ADA Guidelines.
The Open Textbook Library, University of Minnesota's Center for Open Education (open.umn.edu). According to this site and their FAQ page, as of December, 2021, this OER repository includes 972 textbooks of which over %60 percent are peer-reviewed. Some textbooks are PDFS and other textbooks include more accessible EPUB and EPUB3 files. OTL no longer accepts books that do not allow for editing derivations (CC ND). OTL also provides an Understanding Document Accessibility page discussing document accessibility techniques for working with available formats (Online, Ebook, ODF, PDF, XML)
OER Commons and the OER Open Textbooks Hub (you may need to create a free account to view these). This appears to include self-submitted material which may or may not be accessible.
Libretexts
Merlot OER Search Engine

What Other OER Resources Might Be Useful?

Resources from Arizona Colleges and Universities

Open Educational Resources at Maricopa Community Colleges
Open Educational Resources at Northern Arizona University
Open Educational Resources (OER) at the University of Arizona libraries
Open Educational Resources at Arizona State University libraries.

Other Colleges

OER at Valencia College: Evaluating and Adopting Open Textbooks
Open Educational Resources at the University of Hawai'i (oer.hawaii.edu)
SUNY OER Ready-to-Adopt Courses at The State University of New York (oer.suny.edu)
Cool4Ed at CalState.edu. (California State University-MERLOT program)
Open Educational Resources (OER) at West Hills College Lemoore
Open Education at the University of Alaska Fairbanks
Open Educational Resources at Connecticut College
OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (OER): SOURCES AND FAQS at Nichols College
Zero Textbook Cost Courses at Modesto Junior College
Adopt OER, Alamo Colleges District
Open Educational Resources at Portland State University
Open Education Resources, Oregon State University
Open Education: OER Overview, Virginia Tech
Textbook Alternatives, Eastern Michigan University
Open Educational Resources (OER), University of Hawaii
OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES AND PRACTICES, the University of Central Florida
Open Educational Resource Guide, Linn-Benton Community College.
OER Resource Roundup for K-12 educators, Edutopia

Other Resources

Open Education Network at theopen.umn.edu
Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER)
OER Toolkit by Cheryl Cuillier (PDF) shared by PCC's Anthony Sovak.

How Might We Select or Evaluate OER?

Here's a variety of OER evaluation resources. Many of these resources came through Valencia College's LibGuide:

Open Textbooks That Include Faculty OER Reviews.

BCCampus Open Ed reviews OER based on: Comprehensiveness, Content Accuracy, Relevance/Longevity, Clarity, Consistency, Modularity, Organization/Structure/Flow, Interface, Grammatical Errors, Cultural Relevance. Here is a 2015 BCOER Faculty Guide to Evaluating OERs (PDF)
Rubric for Evaluating OERs at Achieve.org

Other OER Evaluation Resources

Evaluating OER, University of Texas Libraries
"How to Find OER." University of Omaha. Promotes Austin Community College's criteria for OER adapting or adopting: Accuracy, Relevance, Production Quality, Accessibility, Interactivity, Cultural Relevance & Sensitivity, Licensing, Ease of Adaptability. It also links to the AchieveOER Rubric (PDF), this BCCampus "Faculty Guide for Evaluating OER" and the OER Evaluation Criteria from AffordableLearningGeorgia.org (PDF)

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO USING OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES by Matthew Lynch from the Edvocate
Open Educational Resources for K-12 educators by Yin-Chan Janet Liao at Edtechbooks.org

What's the Scholarship on OER?

Open Education Resources: an Annotated Bibliography at Texas A&M
Tietjen, P., & Asino, T. I. (2021). What Is Open Pedagogy? Identifying Commonalities. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 22(2), 185-204.
Why OER Matters, University of Baltimore