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"OER Logo" by Unknown - Unknown. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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.
OER/AL$ at Cal Poly Humboldt Data
Year | Total # of courses impacted | Total # of students | Total $ saved | Average $ saved/student | Average # saved/course |
2013-14 | |||||
2014-15 | |||||
2015-16 | 14 | ||||
2016-17 | 36 | ||||
2017-18 | 56 | ||||
2018-19 | 55 | ||||
2019-20 | 45 | 3526 | $292,492 | $84.72 | $6,802.14 |
2020-21 | 140 | 6177 | $454,606.94 | $73.60 | $3,247.19 |
2021-22 | 184 | 6344 | $466,332.22 | $73.51 | $2,534.41 |
2022-23 | 204 | 3966 | $307,096.00 | $77.43 | $1,505.37 |
2023-24* | 391 | **4199 | $968,449.26 | $230.63 | $2,476.00 |
Totals | 1125 | 24,212 | $2,488,976.42 | $107.98 | $3,313.02 |
*Summer course data added, starting in 2023. Student count is calculated by the average of FTE for Fall/Spring and Summer headcount. **Reporting changed in 23-24 to reflect less duplicative counts in total # of student data. Ex - on average if every student had access to OER, they would save $230.63. Prior to SU23, student count was determined by enrollment count for each class with affordable or OER adoptions. It did not differentiate individual students. Using an average of FTE for FA/SP and summer headcount provides a count with less duplication.
[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.] Digitally Established: Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2023
A national survey done by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund in 2020:
U.S. PIRG Education Fund. 2021 "FIXING THE BROKEN TEXTBOOK MARKET" CC BY 4.0
Interested in learning more? Read about the program in Humboldt NOW: New Options Save Students $1 million in Books since 2016.
A Canvas course dedicated to teaching you the ins and outs of OER as well as how to implement them into your class.