OER Curation: Jump-start your OER Exploration

Are you intrigued by OER but unsure where to begin? Too many priorities and not enough time to seek out possible OER? 

Good news! Grand Valley faculty instructors can now request a customized list of potential OER aligned with their courses. 

How does it work?

1. Use the OER Curation Request Form to submit information about a course you teach, the course materials you currently require for that course, and your teaching preferences.
2. The GVSU Libraries' newly-hired OER Curator will use this information to search directories like the Open Textbook Library, OER Commons, and the Directory of Open Access Books for relevant materials.
3. You'll receive an annotated list of OER to consider using in your teaching. 
4. After that, it's up to you - as the subject and teaching expert - to determine whether any of the OER meet your needs! 

If no satisfactory OER can be found, the OER Curator will work with you to document your needs and the gap in available OER. We'll share the result of this analysis online with the goal of inspiring future OER development or collaborations, at GVSU and elsewhere in the OER community.

Any questions? Contact [email protected]. 

More Ways to Get Involved

Discover OER in the Open Textbook Library, GVSU's OER subject guide, or OER Commons. Or contact the OER Curator to receive a customized list of potential OER for your course.

Jump into OER Authoring with Grand Valley Pressbooks, a new, library-supported platform for creating and sharing OER. 

Consider sharing any learning materials you've created for online teaching, so other educators and learners can benefit from your expertise.

Talk to a liaison librarian to discuss OER possibilities, and let us know if you're already using OER or zero-cost materials in your teaching.

The University Libraries are leading the Accelerating OER Initiative to expand Grand Valley's support for the use and creation of Open Educational Resources through new programs, funding opportunities for faculty, and building capacity for library publishing.

The Accelerating OER Initiative is made possible by a grant from the GVSU Innovation Fund, support from the University Libraries, and the sustained advocacy of faculty and students across Grand Valley. This initiative builds on a 2018-2019 University Academic Senate and Student Senate task force, as well as ongoing OER collaborations among university partners.

For Students

Traditional, commercial textbooks are a problem for educational access and student success. In national surveys more than two thirds of undergraduates report skipping required course materials due to cost, even though they anticipate lower grades as a result.  

OER are freely available online, removing this barrier, and studies indicate equal or better educational outcomes when courses use OER.

Learn more about the role of OER for affordability in reports from the Student PIRGs.

For Educators

OER enables innovative approaches to teaching and sharing expertise, by removing uncertainty about copyright and permissions. The licenses on OER allow faculty to remix multiple OER together, customize material for a specific context or learning objective, or engage students as co-creators. Additionally, faculty using OER can count on students having access to their learning materials from the first day of class and can teach accordingly.

Learn more about the possibilities of OER in teaching from the Open Pedagogy Notebook or A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students.