Open textbooks are the most common form of OER and exist in a variety of disciplines. While some disciplines make up the majority of the open textbooks that exist, more and more are being published every day. The big names in repositories for open textbooks are: OpenStax, Open Textbook Library, LibreTexts, BC Campus, and OER Commons.
Open textbooks are one way to significantly reduce student textbook costs and eradicate barriers to equal access of information. While the majority of open textbooks are "born digital" because of their licensing through Creative Commons there is no charge to print pages or create altered physical copies.
Learn more about open textbooks through the webinars, videos, and links below.
Webinars, Videos, and Presentations
Ancillary Materials
Ancillary materials are materials like test banks, quizzes, powerpoints, homework, etc. that tend to come with commercially published textbooks. Some OER like Openstax textbooks come with a pretty basic package of ancillary materials, but a lot of open textbooks do not. This is an area of OER that is steadily growing but still falls short in some disciplines. There are some good sites to search for ancillary materials, but there's also the option to create too!
Webinar Finding OER: Where to Look for High Quality OER - includes section on ancillary materials
Presentation Slides and Handouts from the M.O.S.T. Webinar series with Apurva Ashok
Search for Ancillary Materials:
Other Webinar Links
Concerned about Quality? Evaluating and Adopting OER
OER should be evaluated the same way you would evaluate any resource for your course, taking into consideration the content, the ease with which the ideas are presented, and the ability of it to meet your course needs. In addition, when evaluating OER you will also want to consider how it can be presented and accessed by your students. But, the beauty of OER is that you are free to adapt and remix it to meet your needs!
Here is a rubric created by BCcampus Open Textbook Project to help evaluate OER (CC BY 3.0).
The Community College Consortium for OER also has a template for both evaluating and adopting OER for your course (CC BY 3.0 US).
You can find the PDF versions of each below.
As with any resource that isn't yours, be sure to give credit where credit is due! You can use the Open Washington Attribution Builder (CC BY 4.0) to help you select the best attribution for your OER.
Open Washington also has a self-paced workshop available freely on their site here. This workshop will take you through 10 modules, providing a great introduction to OERs.
Finally, two major OER sites, Open Textbook Library and MERLOT, engage in peer review of materials.
- Open Education Resources Evaluation Rubric(Credit: Created and shared by Rodney Birch of George Fox University.)
- BCcampus OER EvaluationThis rubric is used by the faculty at BCcampus to evaluate their OER.
- CCCOER Adoption TemplateCreated by Dr. Judy Baker.
Open Educational Resources - Best Bets for CCBC
Ancillary Materials
Check out H5P for ideas on creating your own interactive, engaging ancillary materials.
You can also take a look at the eCampus Ontario H5P repository and the Libre Studio Adapt Studio.
Learn more about Ancillary Materials on the Integrating OER into your Course page.
Contact Shaune Pyle, spyle@ccbcmd.edu for more information.