Open Textbooks/Open Educational Resources: OpenOKState & OER

In response to the nationally documented impact the high cost of commercial textbooks has on the personal lives and academic progress of university students, the Oklahoma State University Libraries created the OpenOKState open educational resources program.

Open educational resources (OER) are research, teaching, and learning materials intentionally created and licensed to be freely accessed, shared, retained, and in many cases, modified at no additional cost to the end user.

The OpenOKState OER program supports collaboration and innovation among OSU faculty, instructors, administratros, and students working to increase access to meaningful research, teaching, and learning resources and experiences.

We do this through faculty and instructor programming and initiatives, faculty and instructor consultations, and the provision of Pressbooks, a platform optimized for the modification and creation of OER. We offer the following services and resources:

• Pressbooks - a platform that can be used to modify, create, and publish OER.
• Instructor Support - dedicated support for modifying, creating, and teaching with OER.
• Discovery - access to resources which can help improve the discoverability of created resources.

Email kathy.essmiller@okstate.edu to book a consultation.

OER Services and Consultation

The OpenOKState team offers direct support to faculty and instructors adopting, adapting or creating OER. To access any of these services reach out to kathy.essmiller@okstate.edu. 

Consultation

• Assistance finding existing OER.
• Licensing and copyright, specifically in regards to publishing under and working with Creative Commons licenses.
• One on one or team/department level Pressbooks consultations and workshops.

OER Development Support

• Project management: assistance planning and implementing the OER development process, including instructional design support and regular meetings with the OpenOKState team.
• Basic accessibility review (review for headers, alt-text, language for links)
• Access to the Pressbooks publishing platform and Pressbooks support
• Assistance designing and including interactive elements such as H5P into Pressbooks projects.

Classroom use of OpenOKState grant supported OER has saved OSU students over $4,000,000.

The OpenOKState program has documented over 97 courses across eight colleges committed to using OER or library materials rather than requiring students to purchase commercial resources.     

OSU Libraries supports membership in the Online Consortium of Oklahoma which, along with the OSRHE, offer a range of small stipends as well as library and instructional design support for faculty and instructors designing courses which use open and library resources rather than  student purchased commercial textbooks. 

Attend an OER Workshop

OSU Libraries offer regular workshops on open educational resources, copyright and open licensing, and Pressbooks. The Libraries' event calendar is kept up to date with upcoming training opportunities. You can also visit the OpenOKState Workshops page to see only OpenOKState specific events.

Book an OER Consult

To learn more about an OER topic, open publishing, open licensing, etc., you can book a consult with the OpenOKState team. Email kathy.essmiller@okstate.edu.

Attend a Pressbooks Workshop

If there aren't any OSU Libraries hosted Pressbooks workshops that work for you, Pressbooks hosts several workshops each month. Contact kathy.essmiller@okstate.edu after your workshop to set up a Pressbooks account.

One on One Pressbooks Training

Email kathy.essmiller@okstate.edu to set up a one on one Pressbooks training with the OpenOKState team. We can start with a one hour training at a time that works for you.

Watch Pressbook Training Videos

If none of the workshops or training sessions work for you, the "Getting Started with Pressbooks" playlist from the Pressbooks YouTube channel is a good place to start. Please note that your interface may look slightly different.

All original content on this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. All linked and adapted content maintains its respective license. Portions of this guide are modified from "Guidelines to Open Educational Resources and Zero Textbook Cost" by Leila Walker, Queens College Library, licensed CC BY-NC, and The Ohio State University Affordable Educational Resources Initiative.