Open Educational Resources Alternatives to Textbooks Susan Dean De Anza College December 13,

For prospective students, the first test is often their ability to afford the textbooks.

The Problem: College textbooks are too expensive Students spend an average of $900 a year on textbooks. For students already trying to finance college, the cost of textbooks often forces the student to either go into debt, accept an inferior academic experience, or to drop out.

What are Open Educational Resources? High quality educational content and tools Freely available from the internet, anytime, anywhere All languages Shared Usable and re-usable

OER Survey

OER Tutorial: (Access cnx.org; find content by author Judy Baker)

Benefits of OER Lowers the costs of educational materials for students

Benefits of OER Fosters pedagogical innovation and relevance that avoids “teaching from the textbook”

Benefits of OER Gives faculty tools to gain control over learning content and delivery.

Benefits of OER Share and remix learning materials for customized and localized use Fast feedback loop on quality and relevance of learning materials => continual improvement and rapid development

Statistics Open Textbook Now Available at Connexions Collaborative Statistics by Barbara Illowsky and Susan Dean

Rupi Sekhon wrote a Finite Math book that several sections of Math 11 at De Anza use. The course transfers to UC and CSU. Available at You can download or view a copy of Burzynski & Elllis' "Elementary Algebra" for viewers at You can download or view a copy of Burzynski & Elllis' "Fundamentals of Mathematics" at John Redden has an "Elementary Algebra: Solving Linear Equations in One Variable" module posted to Connexions at - Other Examples

Challenges Articulation and transfer issues Compliance with accessibility (ADA) requirements Printing and computer lab demands on campus by students Coordination with campus bookstores

OER Resources and Tools Tools for locating, organizing, and delivering Tools for collaboration and development Discipline-specific sources Open courseware

Tools for Locating, Organizing, and Delivering OER

Tools for Collaboration and Development

Discipline-specific Sources

Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources Joint effort to develop and use open educational resources and open textbooks in community college courses cccoer.wordpress.com

1: Develops and expands the Community College Consortium for OER toward sustainability 2: Has a website that houses current information about high-quality Open Textbooks appropriate for community college instruction including development identification standards criteria (articulation, accessibility, interoperability, and cultural relevance) Links to sites (like CNX) and to textbooks cccoer.wordpress.com

Discover… Customize… Adopt… Learn how to use Connexions as your toolkit to discover, customize, and adopt open textbooks. Complete Booklet PDF Text Get Account PDF VideoTextVideo Login PDF VideoTextVideo Set Password PDF VideoTextVideo Maintain Account PDF VideoText Video Search Connexions PDF VideoTextVideo Use Materials PDF VideoText Video Check Out Materials PDF VideoTextVideo Edit Materials PDF VideoTextVideo Publish Materials PDF VideoTextVideo Update Collections PDF VideoTextVideo Publish Collections PDF VideoText Getting Textbooks PDF Video TextVideo

Disseminate Open Textbooks –Digital formats –Printed format –Student (DIY) –Campus bookstore –Campus printshop services –Proprietary services

Faculty Role Encourage faculty to develop, locate, review, and and promote OER –Support sabbaticals for development and modification of open textbooks –Give credit toward tenure for faculty work on open textbook development

Project Partners

83 colleges from AZ, CA, MD, NY, WA, NV, Ontario…

AB 2261 by Ira Ruskin Section 1 (b) states that “Community colleges need to take greater advantage of open education resources, especially for basic skills and general education classes, including, but not limited to, algebra, that use course content that remains generally unchanged over time.” 08/bill/asm/ab_ /ab_2261_bill_ _chaptered.pdf

Creative Commons and ccLearn “ccLearn is a division of Creative Commons dedicated to support open learning and open educational resources. Our mission is to minimize barriers to the creation, sharing, and reuse of educational materials—legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.”Creative Commons