Most of us like to get free stuff. Librarians are usually at the forefront of the “free stuff” movement, since our entire purpose is based on lending out materials at no cost. (It’s a terrible business model if you want to make money, but it’s great if you want an educated population!) It should come as no surprise that when we heard about the OER trend, we were definitely on board.
What is OER? It stands for Open Educational Resources, which consist of educational materials that are in the public domain or have been permitted by their authors and publishers to be freely used and distributed. This usually means you can use and share the material without worrying about copyright violations. OERs can include open access articles, videos, eBooks, and yes – even entire textbooks.
In a world where some textbook prices are skyrocketing to $300 apiece, how cool would it be to find out your instructor has assigned a textbook that will cost you $0.00? In the academic world, there is a movement to get instructors to shift from using expensive textbooks in their classes to using OER materials. Many of these open source textbooks can be modified by the instructor to meet specific class needs and produced as PDFs for convenience. (And for those who like to doodle in the margins, print copies are also sometimes available at significantly lower prices.)
How do you know if your instructor is already using OERs? Check the course schedule – any courses that don’t have textbook costs are indicated with an icon on the last column.
To find out even more about OERs, check out our OER Guide: https://cerrocoso.libguides.com/oer
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