Biology is perhaps the most complex of the sciences, given the incredible variety of chemical species that are interconnected in spatial and temporal pathways that are daunting to understand. Their interconnections lead to emergent properties such as memory, consciousness, and recognition of self and non-self. To understand how these…

Providing educational resources without burdening students financially is considered higher education's moral and sensible mission (Farrow, 2016). The financial burden of one or multiple textbooks can produce a great deal of stress on students, especially if the textbooks do not fulfill students' needs in satisfying learning objectives. We attempt…

The cost of course materials creates a gap between students who can afford them and students who cannot. Open educational resources (OER) are one way to close this gap through freely shared and flexible instructor-authored resources. OER programs have plenty of support through organizations that coordinate conferences, highly impactful open…

Across North America, the open education movement has blossomed in the past 10 years, with a majority of institutions of higher education employing open textbooks in at least one course. Unfortunately, social work lags behind other disciplines in the adoption, adaptation, and creation of open educational resources. This teaching note offers…

Introduction: Psychology instructors face decisions about adopting new approaches to lectures, readings, and assessment in their courses. Statement of the Problem: These choices about course structure can be both intimidating and confusing in terms of the costs and benefits for different options. Literature Review: As framed by anecdotal and…

The increasing cost of textbooks has created a demand for no cost/low cost learning resources for students. The University System of Georgia, through their Affordable Learning Grants has supported the development of no cost/low cost course transformation activities. Faculty at Clayton State University (CSU) have been engaged in the development of…

There is no better time than now for sociologists to adopt open educational resources (OER), and sociology as a discipline is well positioned to lead. Adopting OER takes seriously the well-documented financial challenges faced by many students, supports classroom and campus goals of equity and inclusion, and allows for increased instructor…

The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement is now more than twenty years beyond its inception when it was built on the concept that digital materials make learning content easy to reuse and share. This report discusses current legislative trends in OER and offers recommended OER practices for states.

The Iowa Private Academic Library Open Educational Resources (IPAL OER) Project supported 62 open educational resources (OER) projects at 18 private colleges and universities in Iowa. The project impacted 1,800 students during the 2021-2022 academic year. Students saved more than $208,000 on the costs of textbooks. OER adoption led to positive…

Lesley Gumb joined the New England of Higher Education (NEBHE) in late September 2019 as its Open Education Fellow to help build upon the grassroots efforts that have been underway for years in the Northeast aiming to lessen the burden that textbook costs place on higher education students and their families. Like so many of her colleagues doing…

The authors, both university faculty in construction management programs, desired to use available resources to develop new material for students. The authors' goal was simply to create a substitute for a traditional textbook with digital content that offers a unique way for students to visualize and learn new concepts. While student engagement is…

The rising costs of college tuition, housing, and textbooks can be a barrier to many who seek a certification or degree in a health profession field. Affordable open educational resources (AOER) are an attractive alternative to expensive course materials. The Health Sciences Department at Weber State University created a comprehensive, two…

Among many variables associated with the chaos and stress of the pandemic, a lack of direct access to learning materials like textbooks has arisen as one of the major roadblocks to student learning in the era of COVID-19. This nation has continued to observe a sharp rise in textbook prices since 1977, which leaves many students enrolled at…

This article adopts a sociomaterial perspective on ELT materials and illustrates how a mandatory textbook is used as a springboard to create decolonizing relations in the classroom ecology. Sociomaterial perspectives view learning as not the transmission but the emergence of knowledge from embodied relations, which shifts the focus from the…

Selecting course reading materials is not necessarily an easy process. This article discusses selection concerns such as cost, inclusivity and options ranging from traditional textbooks to course packs. A review of literature finds extensive information about adoption of OER materials. Additionally, articles referring to difficulties in course…