by Sarah Bender, Communications Coordinator
Attending college is a significant investment. But while tuition and housing costs can be offset by scholarships and financial aid packages, there’s another expense students can routinely struggle to finance at the beginning of every semester — purchasing the many textbooks, access codes, and other course materials required for each of their classes.
The University Libraries is committed to helping reduce this pain point for students at Carnegie Mellon, and other institutions around the world. To expand the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) that are customizable, student-driven, and drive lasting educational experience, the Libraries offers a number of services, training opportunities, and grants to assist and incentivize instructors ready to take advantage of options that students can access and learn from at no additional cost.
“OER comes in all different types, from textbooks to simulators. These resources can be tailored to fit the specific needs of a course and eliminate financial barriers to achievement in courses,” said Open Knowledge Librarian Emily Bongiovanni. “These freely available resources not only support our students, but also allow us to showcase our extraordinary curriculum and can make an impact on folks outside of CMU.”
For many faculty, the first step of engaging with OER is diving into the resources already available for a particular subject. During a consultation, a Libraries specialist can help navigate the many different repositories that host free content. Options vary depending on instructor needs, and can include open textbooks, homework problems, simulators, and more.
If available OER don’t quite match the curriculum, another option is to modify resources that already exist. Here, the Libraries is available to advise on what copyright considerations to take.
Sometimes, existing resources might not be available for specialized classes at all. For these courses, it can be hard to find a commercial resource that is tailored to student learning, let alone an open one. Many instructors in this situation, especially at CMU, ultimately end up creating their own OER that perfectly fits their niche curriculum.
“Many instructors find themselves creating resources for their classes already, and if they're interested in opening their content up for other use, we'd love to help assist with that dissemination,” said Bongiovanni. “We can help you find a platform to make your content public, whether that’s through just posting to Canvas Commons, utilizing an open textbook publishing platform, or depositing in an open repository.”
Bongiovanni — who also served as a leadership member for Affordable Learning PA — has offered training opportunities for educators across the entire state of Pennsylvania the past two summers on using OER in the classroom. The training, called “Open Education and OER in PA,” was an eight-module OER certificate course. She worked with the Pennsylvania Department of Education, arranging for the secretary to facilitate certificates for the 150 participants across the state.
Hosted through CMU’s Canvas instance, the training opportunities attracted faculty from higher education institutions across the state, as well as a handful of instructional designers, librarians, and education-adjacent professionals in other roles. This summer, Bongiovanni also offered another training open exclusively to the CMU community.
In another recent initiative, the Libraries partnered with the Simon Initiative and the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation to solicit proposals for grants to expand the adoption of OER in CMU courses. Six faculty across campus, in disciplines ranging from neuroscience and philosophy to math and chemistry, were awarded $2,500 each to create an OER that they can use in their course. These new OER will be implemented over the next academic year in the fall or spring.
“For the project that I proposed, I’m working with an existing open statistics book to develop a set of materials that will facilitate structured labs in my class,” said Abigail Noyce, a research professor with the Neuroscience Institute and special faculty in the Department of Psychology. These materials are for Noyce’s Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology course, and she plans to roll them out in Spring 2025. “Standard undergraduate textbooks in this area are either leveled too low for juniors, or unbearably dry. Plus, students are charged a lot of money for a product that’s not terribly unique — I’m really excited to work with the Libraries to help my students break out of that system.”
To gauge the impact of these various measures, Bongiovanni worked with a Summer Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship (SURA) course this summer to capture course costs across campus, and find out which courses are currently using open resources. The group looked through an open registry of CMU syllabi, which accounts for about 43% of all courses, to find out more about the course materials required and recommended for students in a variety of disciplines.
Of all of the associated costs listed (for both required and optional materials) on the available syllabi, about 40% of the costs were for recommended materials. “These costs associated with recommended resources are wild to me. They’re driving the equity gap even more,” Bongiovanni said.
Even faculty who might not be able to implement OER resources in their classrooms right away can still help students in other capacities.
“OER might not be the best fit for every course right now,” Bongiovanni added. “But even if it’s not for your course at this time, supporting OER adoption can allow students to continue learning outside the classroom and make education more equitable for all.”
Instructors can also use university subscriptions as another intermediate way to reduce student expenses. These efforts are often referred to as Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC), which includes OER as well as resources that the university — or, in many cases, the Libraries — subscribes to in order to provide access to students. From the available syllabi data, the SURA group found that some instructors link to the item's record in the Libraries' catalog on the syllabus. While not truly open access by definition, resources that fall under the ZTC umbrella but aren’t OER also effectively reduce cost for students.
The CMU Libraries course reserves also play a large role in ZTC efforts. Access to these resources allows for students to either delay purchasing items and avoid a large bill at the beginning of the semester, or allows them to not purchase the resource at all.
“One of my goals is to make it possible for a student to go through a degree at CMU in a ZTC format, never being charged directly for course materials that are difficult if not impossible to get financial aid for,” Bongiovanni explained. “It really makes a difference in how affordable it is to pursue an education.”
To begin a conversation about what steps you can take to make your course more affordable, open, and accessible, reach out to Bongiovanni to schedule a consultation.