Provide your students an alternative to expensive textbooks by following these steps:
Find the right OER for your subject by browsing the OER resources by discipline in this Guide. Try to familiarize yourself with the sources by going to their website.
Search for the appropriate textbooks for your course.
Review and evaluate the textbooks based on the content and whether it suits your teaching style and your students. You can also utilize various evaluation tools available from the Community College Consortium on Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) to do so.
Decide if you want to use the textbook as is, edit, 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 repositories will have different options for editing and publishing revised copies.
Distribute to your students by uploading into BlackBoard. You can select the best format to distribute to your class such as online, or downloadable PDF.
Study of 16,000 students across 10 institutions, compares several measures of student academic success between those using open textbooks and those using traditional textbooks.
