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Sustainable Learning at Cal Poly Humboldt

Cal Poly Humboldt's Sustainable Learning Program is a campus strategy for implementing the CSU Affordable Learning Solutions initiative. This faculty development program aims to decrease the cost of an education by promoting and supporting faculty in evaluating and adopting high-quality, peer-reviewed open textbooks and open educational resources (OER), and other resources that reduce the need for costly textbooks. 

Open Educational Resources (OER) are free online teaching and learning materials. They are videos, textbooks, quizzes, learning modules and more. This guide collects the best OER and organizes them by HSU department. If your discipline isn't listed, start with the general tab for multi-disciplinary OER resources. Using OER in your classroom can save you time and your students money. Take a look and see what is available in your discipline!

In addition, an immediate way you can help to reduce the cost of college education and increase student success is to promote textbooks on reserve in the Library and by placing your required readings on reserve.

Already using OER? Report OER Adoption here!

Cal Poly Humboldt Faculty OER/AL$ Showcases

• NEW for 2023 - Sara Hart, Religious Studies
• NEW for 2023 - Pam Bowers, Social Work
• Visit Cal Poly Humboldt Faculty Showcases on Merlot

Why use OER?

• Student Success: Textbook costs negatively impact student access to required materials (66.6% did not purchase the required textbook) and learning (37.6% earn a poor grade; 19.8% fail a course).
• Graduation Rate: Because of textbook costs students reported that they take fewer courses (47.6%), do not register for a course (45.5%), drop a course (26.1%), or withdraw from courses (20.7%).
• Equity: A study by the University of Georgia reports a one-third reduction in DFW rate among minority and Pell-eligible students in courses which switched to OER.
• Class Design: Requiring students to buy a textbook means an obligation to teach to its goals. Conversely, OER can be edited to meet the course-specific goals for the class.
• Recruitment: Students choose courses with zero-cost textbooks. A course or department offering zero-cost textbooks will be able to market to current and incoming students.

[Research provided by the 2016 Florida Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey. Studies by Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission and Student Public Interest Research Groups corroborate the findings.]

Impact of Textbook Costs on Students

Survey results of 309 Humboldt students during Fall 2016 showed:

• 65% of students indicated they skipped buying a required textbooks because of its costs
• 22.6% said they have not taken or have dropped a course because of textbook costs

Interested in learning more? Read about the program in Humboldt NOW: New Options Save Students $1 million in Books since 2016.

For More Information, send an email to oer@humboldt.edu

• Kimberly Stelter, First Year Experience & Student Success Librarian
• Kyle Morgan, Scholarly Communications & Digital Scholarship Librarian
• Morgan Barker, Sustainability Librarian
• Juergen Riedelsheimer, Graduate AL$/OER Student Assistant

Faculty Professional Development Materials

OER Canvas Course 

A Canvas course dedicated to teaching you the ins and outs of OER as well as how to implement them into your class. We offer $300 stipends available for those who take the training course.