Research & Subject Guides: Scholarly Communications Services for Researchers: Open Educational Resources and Course Adopted Texts

Open Educational Resources and Course Adopted Texts

Open educational resources (OERs) are any educational materials that are available in the public domain or with an open license. These resources can be used as an alternative to costly traditional textbooks. OERs can save students money and reduce the cost of higher education. OERs may include, but are not limited to, the following: textbooks, learning objects, syllabi, video, audio, tests, assignments, lecture notes, etc.

Course adopted texts (CATs) are library licensed ebooks that are used by faculty in place of a traditional textbook. CATs must be licensed for unlimited simultaneous users to ensure that all students in the course can access the text.

OERs at North Carolina A&T State University

Bluford Library supports a variety of OER initiatives. The library is a member of the Open Textbook Network, an organization that promotes and supports the use of OERs. The library works closely with Instructional Technology Services and Distance Education, as well as the Center for Teaching Excellence, to support faculty who wish to incorporate OERs into tehir courses. The library also supports Open Education North Carolina, a project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to provide free, open textbooks to the University of North Carolina System’s most frequently taught courses.

The library can provide OER consultation services to interested faculty. Liaison librarians can help faculty navigate OER repositories and identify appropriate resources for their courses. If faculty members create their own OERs for their courses, the library can potentially host them in the institutional repository in order to ensure that they are preserved and easily accessible.

CATs at North Carolina A&T State University

The library can support faculty members interested in adopting texts from the library collection. Librarians can help the faculty member determine if an appropriate book exists in the collection, check the license to ensure that unlimited users can access it simultaneously, and help provide access through Blackboard in accordance with the terms of the license.

On a limited basis, the library can also investigate the feasibility of purchasing ebooks for this purpose that have not already been licensed by the library. This service’s availability depends on the library’s budget.

Additional OER and CAT Resources

Open Textbook Library
Open textbooks are textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality. These books can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost. All textbooks are either used at multiple higher education institutions; or affiliated with an institution, scholarly society, or professional organization. The library currently includes 668 textbooks, with more being added all the time. The Open Textbook Library is supported by the Center for Open Education and the Open Textbook Network.
OpenStax
OpenStax started as an Open Educational Resource (OER) repository where faculty around the world could publish, share, and remix educational materials. We started publishing our own line of free, peer-reviewed textbooks in 2012 after we realized the best way to help students and teachers find high-quality, open learning materials was to create them ourselves! Using OpenStax is simple! Review the textbook online, and if you decide to use it in your class, let us know. To access faculty-only materials, you can create an OpenStax account and request faculty access. Once we manually verify that you’re an instructor, you will have access to all faculty content. Include the textbook URL in your course materials, and from there, students can choose how they want to view the book.
Open Textbooks for Engineering
This is a list of open textbooks for engineering, curated by the Engineering Libraries Division of the Association for Engineering Education. It is organized by discipline.
UNC Course Assets
Cross-institutional faculty-led teams of disciplinary experts, librarians, and instructional design staff from across the UNC System have collaborated to create and curate these rigorous, extensive, discipline-specific Digital Course Collection Enhancements.These inaugural collections specifically support ten high-demand courses that are common across most UNC System institutions: Introductory Financial Accounting, Anatomy & Physiology 1, Biology 1, Calculus 1, Chemistry 1, Chemistry 2, Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, Organic Chemistry 1, and Introductory Statistics. All collections are available for faculty and grad student instructors beginning July 1, 2020, and continuing into the fall and spring semesters.
Open Education North Carolina
Open Education North Carolina (OENC) is an NC LIVE initiative that aims to reduce the cost of higher education for North Carolina students by providing free, open textbooks for the most frequently taught courses across NC’s 2- and 4-year colleges and universities.
We're partnering with the UNC System, NC Independent Colleges & Universities, and NC Community Colleges to offer open education workshops across the state and to provide adoption grants to faculty and instructors who choose to adopt an open textbook.
MERLOT
The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.
The OER Starter Kit Workbook
The OER Starter Kit Workbook is a remix of the OER Starter Kit to include worksheets to help instructors practice the skills they need to confidently find, use, or even create open educational resources (OER). We welcome instructors, librarians, instructional designers, administrators, and anyone else interested in OER to explore the OER Starter Kit Workbook.