Overview
The article explains textbook affordability resources and Open Educational Resources (OER) that faculty can use to help reduce textbook costs and promote equity in education. It also highlights the support and tools available at Minnesota State University, Mankato for faculty to adopt, create, and publish OER, as well as strategies to improve textbook affordability for students.
What Are Open Educational Resources (OER)?
Open Educational Resources (OER) are high quality materials that are accessible, open or flexibly licensed (for example, Creative Commons Licenses), low or no-cost, many include free and/or open-source software. OER can be used to reduce textbook costs for students,, as a subject of research on teaching and learning, for professional development, peer review opportunities, authoring, and more.
Getting Started
Library Services and IT Solutions' Academic Technology Services work in collaboration to offer textbook affordability training and resources to faculty. For an introduction to textbook affordability and OER, check out the Textbook Affordability Starter Kit. Find additional information about OER, support, and resources on the Library Services website.
Textbook Affordability Open Course
This course is an introduction to textbook affordability, open educational resources, and other open practices that impact equity in our classrooms. While it is geared towards higher education faculty, the concepts and practices covered here can be used in any teaching and learning scenario. This course will explore concepts tied to the one cost factor teachers can control - course materials - and relate that directly to increasing equitable practice in the classroom. You can find links to course cartridges that you can import into your learning management system and the facilitator's guide below:
Publishing Your Own OER
There are a few options for publishing your own materials:
- Cornerstone: An open-access publishing platform for a multitude of resources.
- Pressbooks: Ebook publishing platform for novels, dissertations, poetry, children's books, etc
Using OER in the Classroom
Browse these documents for ideas to use OER in your course:
FAQ
Why is textbook affordability an important issue?
The 2019 Bureau of Labor Statistics says that textbook costs have increased 1,000% since the 1970s, and they have risen 88% between 2006 and 2016. Bundled access codes sometimes hide costs from students, they can be used for only a certain amount of time, and they can render the digital book useless without the code. Textbook affordability aims to find solutions to the high cost of textbooks, providing alternative materials to positively impact students' lives and their success.
What is an example of how OER can reduce costs?
An example is the course EEC 620 that can implement a book from the Memorial Library's ebook collection to reduce costs for students. Without OER, the textbook is $97. At 25 students per semester, that comes out to $2,425. With the implementation of the same book from the library's ebook collection, which is free, the cost is driven down to $0.
How can faculty make a difference in textbook affordability?
- Explore OER support, services, and resource on the Library Services website.
- Talk to a representative from the bookstore to see what options they offer, such as the Maverick Textbook Reserve.
- Work with your subject librarian to place the textbook on reserve, search for an ebook version of the text, or find alternatives. Learn more about Library Resources for Textbook Affordability
- Talk to a librarian at the Blue Earth County Public Library to see if your literature or other required readings could be made more widely available for check out
- Check to see if an earlier edition of the textbook could be used rather than the latest edition.
- Ask yourself if the textbook is really necessary or if you cover it all with lectures and other reading.
More Resources
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