Open Educational Resources (OER) are freely available, openly licensed classroom resources and tools such as textbooks, documents, media, and more that can be adapted for use. They are shared in higher education by individual instructors and instructional designers to both assist instructors in teaching and to ease the financial burden of classroom resources on students.
The libraries at West Chester University are committed to providing support and resources for faculty and students to adopt affordable or freely available, high-quality classroom materials and resources. In September 2017, The Affordable College Textbook Act was introduced in Congress in an effort to expand the use of open textbooks while reducing the cost of textbooks for college students. This act has been under consideration since then and has been supplemented by a federal open textbook pilot grant.
For more information on OER, use the following resources:
There are many benefits in choosing to transition from high-cost textbooks to low or no cost OER:
We understand that OER is a large and cumbersome project to take on and that there are perceived and real barriers. The librarians and OER Committee are fully prepared to guide and assist faculty in finding credible, reliable, and appropriate OER resources.