As opportunities to remix or tailor-make course materials expand, the Brock University Library is helping faculty and students reap the benefits of no-cost, accessible learning materials.

Open educational resources (OER) are free teaching and learning materials that can be used and altered by anyone at no cost. They can both alleviate financial barriers for students and increase the variety of instructional resources available to enhance learning experiences.

“The uptake in open educational resources has been gaining ground as instructors and faculty members discover there are ways to create course content that is more versatile than a traditional textbook,” says Collections Librarian Laurie Morrison. “They can come to us to help build their curriculum and reading list around what we have access to through the library instead of the other way around.”

In 2024, Morrison worked with Vice-Provost of Teaching and Learning Rajiv Jhangiani, PhD student Oya Pakkal (MA ’23) and Wenting Rong (MEd ’24) to survey more than 400 Brock undergraduate students about the impact of course material costs on educational outcomes.

The researchers found that, due to cost, 72 per cent of respondents did not purchase required course materials, 32 per cent reported earning a poorer grade and 20 per cent chose to take fewer courses.

The findings, Morrison says, illustrate the need to provide equitable and versatile options for students and faculty alike.

“The easier we can make it for students to access the resource they need and the less speedbumps ahead of them, the more likely it is they’re going to read it,” she says. “Using OERs also gives you the ability to be to be nimble and change things on the fly. If there is updated information or an applicable current event, you can easily put that into the OER for an upcoming lecture, and I think students are responsive to that.”

Brock’s OER Grant program, which was established in 2023, helps instructors offset the cost of replacing or adapting commercial textbooks with OERs.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Scott Neufeld has received the grant for three of his courses.

“It’s a great incentive for me and students love it too,” he says. “The OER grant program and in-house support makes it easier than ever for instructors to both see an added incentive for making this switch, beyond the obvious incentives for students, as well as dedicated support to help you identify a suitable OER replacement for the textbook you have been using.”

The grant supported his efforts to provide an OER textbook for his Introductory Community Psychology course, for example.

“It seemed like a great opportunity for me to align my own values with the values expressed through community psychology, such as social justice, accessibility and inclusion,” he says, adding that the approach also saves students money.

Teaching and Learning Librarian Kymberly Ash says there are a variety of ways to implement OERs.

“There’s an opportunity for everyone to explore options if they’re curious, and it doesn’t mean changing your entire course at all at once, either,” she says. “It could mean using a standard textbook and incorporating some activities from an OER, adding in some library articles and supplementing with news articles for current events.”

Finding and incorporating supplemental course materials typically takes a maximum of a few weeks, including support from the Library, she says. Finding a full textbook replacement and redesigning a course may take a few months and can also include support from both the Library and the Centre for Pedagogical Innovation.

“Whatever path they choose to take, there’s lots of people across campus who are ready and able to support,” says Ash.

Ash and Acting Associate University Librarian Jennifer Thiessen are also hosting an introductory overview of the process in the OER 101: An Introduction for Instructors workshop on Tuesday, June 17. Interested faculty can connect with OER experts at the library as well as discover how to implement open materials into their own courses in big and small ways.