OER Student Resources

What are Low-Cost or No-Cost Courses?

Low-Cost courses have textbook costs under $40, and No-Cost courses do not have any required textbook costs.  These calculations do not include course fees, so additional costs may be beyond textbooks.

Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching, and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or have an open license copyright that permits no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose retention, redistribution, and adaptation by others.

Faculty use free, openly licensed materials in place of or in addition to traditional textbooks and course materials. OERs come in a range of materials, including full-length books, videos, tutorials, worksheets, presentations, and more. Faculty who utilize these materials select high-quality content that reflects the needs of their students and course learning objectives. Faculty may also choose to customize the OER they use in their courses.

Most OERs are digital resources that are available immediately and accessible anytime online. Since access is open, students may retain these resources after class.