There are thousands of freely available open textbooks and OER. It can be overwhelming to make sense of all the available options and successfully find OER content that is appropriate for adoption. Below are three good starting point videos (Quill West, Open Education Leader from Pierce College) designed to support successful searches for OER resources.
Video #1 (4.45 minutes) |
Video #2 (5.33 minutes) |
Video #3 (3.53 minutes) |
Faculty needing assistance with discovering and adopting OER content and open textbooks are encouraged to contact Raymond Vasquez, Research and User Services Librarian or the OAT Project Team oat-project@njit.edu. We are here to help.
Open Textbooks are textbooks that are freely available with non-restrictive licences. Covering a wide range of disciplines, open textbooks are available to download and print in various files formats from several web sites and OER repositories.
Open textbooks can range from public domain books to existing textbooks to textbooks created specifically for OER.
Open textbooks help solve the problems of the high cost of textbooks, book shortages, and access to textbooks as well as providing the capacity to better meet local teaching and learning needs" according to a Module created by Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME).
You should be assessing open textbooks against criteria that reflects your teaching experience and knowledge of student needs. Additional criteria to consider when selecting an open textbook or OER:
(1) Content - accuracy of materials, depth, breadth, richness, timeliness, and cultural needs
(2) Presentation - writing quality and tone, reading level, visual presentation, supplemental materials, hierarchy of information.
Source: Open Textbook Adoption from OpenStax
Provide your students with affordable alternative to expensive proprietary textbooks by using these guidelines:
Source: Open Textbook Adoption from OpenStax
Introduction to OER for Open Courses, PowerPoint Presentation by Nate Angell, Lumen Learning
Introduction to Open Educational Resources, by Judy Baker, Openstax CNX
Understanding OER in 10 Videos (YouTube)
Introduction to OER: A Tutorial by OpenStax CNX - A self-paced introduction to open textbook adoption.
7 Things You Should Know About OER, Educause
Fast Facts: College Textbook Costs and OER, Open Textbook Network and SPARC
Open Education Fact Sheet (SPARC*)
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