Open Educational Resources for Faculty

What are OER?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are free teaching, learning, and research materials that are openly licensed, allowing users to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute them. OER can include textbooks, quizzes, videos, interactive learning modules, and more.

In recognition of Open Education Week (the first week in March), this guide aims to raise awareness of an important issue affecting students: textbook affordability and the availability of open-access alternatives.

Why use OER?

OER helps lower financial barriers for students while improving learning outcomes. Research continues to highlight its impact:

• Textbook costs continue to harm student success: A 2022 survey of Florida students found that 53.5% of students did not purchase a required textbook due to cost and 32.4% reported earning a poor grade as a result (Florida Virtual Campus, 2022).
• OER adoption is increasing but still has room to grow: 41% of faculty reported using OER materials in at least one of their courses during the 2023-24 academic year. (Bay View Analytics, 2024).

Beyond affordability, OER allows faculty to customize course materials, ensuring relevance, adaptability, and timely updates rather than relying on costly, static textbooks.

For help finding OER materials for your courses, contact your subject librarian or explore campus OER resources.

What is AL$?

CSU's Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) is a program that enables faculty to choose and provide more affordable, quality educational content for their students. By reducing CSU student course material expenses, more students acquire the educational resources they need to succeed at CSU. With AL$, faculty and students have greater access to quality free and lower-cost learning materials through a variety of programs and partnerships. 

Sac State's Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) coordinates campus-wide OER efforts. Contact Andrea Terry for more information. The CTL can help faculty achieve the following goals:

• Allow faculty, staff and students easy access to find low-cost or free textbooks and course content.
• Recognize the efforts of faculty to reduce costs for students.
• Share and learn from other CSU faculty about OER and AL$ efforts.

AL$ Resources

• Center for Teaching and Learning’s AL$
• Zero Cost Materials FAQ

Images with Sacramento State student responses from Open Education Resources Week 2020.