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Library Services and IT Solutions' Academic Technology Services work in collaboration to offer textbook affordability training and resources to faculty.
Learn More About OER
What Are Open Educational Resources (OER)?
Open Educational Resources (OER) are high quality materials that are:
- accessible
- open or flexibly licensed, e.g. 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.
- Check out our Textbook Affordablity Starter Kit
Getting Started with OER
Find OER Resources for Your Classes
Find more information about OER, support, and resources on the Library Services website.
Explore OER Resources
More resources:
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:
Publish 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:
More Ways to Reduce Textbook Costs
- Talk to a representative from our 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.
Textbook Affordability Quick Facts
Introduction
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. Finding solutions to the high cost of textbooks and their impact on students' lives and their success is the idea of Textbook Affordability.
Why this issue?
It’s important to stop and admit that “books and supplies” are not the highest cost leading to affordability issues in higher education. So, why are we talking about this one? It is the one cost that we as faculty can impact and it has a disproportionate impact on the academic success of students (Ernst, 2020).
Minnesota State Mankato snapshot
- 30% of course sections require no textbook
- 17% of course sections require books <$40
- 25 faculty have chosen OER materials
- 27% of courses requiring textbooks include material from Maverick Textbook Reserve and Library Reserve programs
Factors impacting student retention
Increasing costs of textbooks affect all three factors:
- Finances
- Faculty Support
- Guidance Community and Environment
One small change
Without OER:
- EEC 620 | $97 textbook | 25 students/semester
With the implementation of the same book from the library's ebook collection:
- EEC 620 | $0 | 125 students impacted to date (Total EEC 620 savings to date $12,125)
Faculty can make a difference
Top Textbook Affordability Resources:
- Maverick Textbook Reserve
- Open Educational Resources
- Library Holdings