Collaboration Between Library, Faculty, and Instructional Design to Increase All Open Educational Resources for Curriculum Development and Delivery

Students at universities spend an average of $1,250 yearly on textbooks and course materials. Can a collaboration between the Library and the Instructional Design Department create value for student populations by incorporating OER into the course development process? This is a case study of one University with a large online and distributed network with controls over the course design, timeline and curriculum delivered by the faculty. This University’s team tested whether the entire course could be designed in a scalable format using OERs collaborating with a librarian to organize the resources so students will have ready access to OER every time the course is offered. The result was an internal recommendation on structuring collaboration with the Library and course developers and presentation of the selected OERs in the Learning Management System. The result explored how adopting OERs redesigned course assignments and assessments in courses and fostered the development of original OERs in discipline-specific topics and content. The impact was a greater use of library resources by faculty and students and an economic impact to the student who does not have to purchase costly course materials. This process also supported course authentic assessment creation that are not dependent upon paid resources.