Except where otherwise noted, the content in this guide was researched and written by Dr. Matt Panhans. Below, find a PDF copy of his report.
As a researcher you may want to share your work widely in order to increase access/ visibility, keep track of your research impact, as well as connect with colleagues. Building a personal brand allows you to market your achievements and become more accessible to a wider audience. Below are a list of resources to assist with that process.
A fall 2020 survey of students conducted by the Student Public Interest Research Group revealed 65% of students decided not to buy a textbook because of the cost. (source) More than 90% of these students felt that their grade could be negatively impacted due to their decision. Few students today buy hard copy textbooks yet still 21% report not buying access codes needed for online materials from publishing companies due to cost. These findings strongly suggest that there is an opportunity to improve student learning and success. As a result of student demand for lower cost textbooks, there have been several major efforts to create open educational resources (OER) that can be made available to students at low or no cost. (source, source, source) Open educational resources are defined as learning, teaching, and research materials that reside in the public domain or are available under an open license that permits their free use and sometimes remixing to meet one’s course needs. These resources include various materials such as photos, reports, individual teaching modules, and full textbooks.
A second motivation for OER development is the goal of making education more affordable and accessible to all. Several higher education institutions who are looking to reach a wider or nontraditional audience are actively promoting the use of OER.
Though publishers are now providing lower cost electronic versions of many textbooks, there is a growing number of faculty who chose to use open textbooks as an alternative. The use of free OERs by faculty increased from 5% in 2015-2016 to 22% in 2021-2022. (source) Continued adoption and generation of OER materials requires that faculty become aware of what is available. In cases where one might desire tailored course material, which is not readily available, authorship is an option. For those interested in authorship, one first needs to learn about the resources available which facilitate the authorship and publication processes.
The aim of this work is threefold; 1) identify available existing OER resources, 2) identify resources for faculty interested in authorship, and 3) embark upon authoring a Materials Science eBook targeted at mechanical engineering students by producing three sample chapters.
Several organizations/networks dedicated to OER have well established websites which provide a listing of available open textbooks and other resource material. Each site can be easily searched by field of study to find available open textbooks (eBooks) and other educational resources. The following is a partial list:
Faculty interested in using existing OER materials will find a wide variety of available materials at these links. Adaptation of existing materials as an alternative to authoring provides many advantages as the desired content may already exist, or at least most of it. Even so, adaptation from several sources will likely prove to be time consuming process as one works to organize one’s course.
Open access resources are a great way to save money and make courses more accessible for students. And open access resources aren't the only way of achieving this goal.
Open access resources can be tough to find. There are some sites that collect OERs (as outlined in the "Adapting Resources" section of this guide). You may also find open materials (journals, books, and more) using some of our library databases.
If you are selecting materials for use in a course at MSOE, you may also consider using ebooks, journals, and other materials in the library's databases to provide your students with free alternatives to course reading. A source in our databases need not be open access in order for students to access them without cost. A librarian can help create direct links to library items that you may post in Canvas or share via email or other digital format. (You can also create these links yourself if you like, using our Linking to library resources guide.)
If you need help finding library resources to accompany your planned class work, reach out to a librarian!
If you have suggestions for how to make this page better, please contact Elizabeth Jerow, Library Director (jerow@msoe.edu).