Open Educational Resources

How do I adopt an open textbook and include it in the SPU Bookstore listing for my course?

1. Start by searching the Open Textbook Sources listed in this Guide. Or contact your librarian to assist in the search.


2. Review and evaluate the textbooks based on the content and whether it suits your course objectives, your teaching style, and your students. You can also consult the Faculty Evaluation Guide below or this Faculty Checklist for Evaluating Course Materials.


3. Decide if you want to use the textbook as-is or modify the contents. One of the benefits of open textbooks is flexibility to customize them for specific course designs as much or as little as you desire. If you want to make edits or append content, make sure the licensing allows that. Different open textbooks will have different options for editing and publishing revised copies.


4. Distribute to your students by linking to the textbook or uploading into Canvas. You can select the best format to distribute to your class such as online or downloadable PDF. 


5. Notify the SPU bookstore of your open textbook adoption through the faculty portal.

Adding OER or zero-cost materials info (such as library eBooks) into the Textbook Adoption portal allows students:

• clarity about what to expect with the course
• a chance to pre-engage with course materials
• reduced stress or anxiety about any financial costs of textbooks

To adopt open educational resources or other free materials for your course, 

1. Sign into the Akademos Adoptions and Analytics Portal for SPU and select a course. 

2. Select Materials: To add open educational resources, check the box for "Alternate Adoption Settings," and then select the button for "Course uses OER/Zero cost materials." 

3. Add Course Notes: Explain to the students how they will access the OER. For example, you could include:

• This course uses a free open-access textbook entitled The Best Textbook Ever, which you can access at: textbookurl.com and which will be linked from our Canvas course.
• In this course, we'll draw from three eBooks available for free through the SPU library. Here are the library permalinks to these three texts: link1, link 2, link 3.

4. Preview Course: For OER, students will see a message of "This course uses Open Education Resources/Zero cost course material. There are no required books to purchase for this course, or items will be provided to you in the class."

As you consider OER, remember first your pedagogical objectives. If an entire resource doesn't work for you, could a portion of it be helpful? Because of the open license, you can consider combining large or small portions of multiple OER, in addition to considering fair use for small portions of other works.

Below are some checklists of items to consider when determining if an open resource will work for your course: