University of Rochester
IL-56: Open and Shared Course Materials

University Libraries offer Course Reserve services in which professors who place a request can have their course texts available for two-hour loan in our libraries. The libraries also try to locate e-copies of these books that we can make available for students to use through the library.

University Libraries supports two book publishing platforms that assist in and/or store open materials (Pressbooks and URRR).

• The Open Ed Grant provides incentives of funding and staff support to encourage instructors to adopt open educational practices - these efforts typically result in lowering course material costs for students (e.g., open educational resources), increasing access to course materials, and fostering student engagement in their own learning should the instructor incorporate open pedagogical practices in the classroom (i.e., students become content creators and collaborators).

• Find it for Free campaign attempts to be timed at a moment between students receiving a course materials list (e.g., syllabus) and purchasing the necessary materials. We try to intercept students within this timeframe to see if we might find their books for free - whether through Course Reserves, e-book availability (and librarians prioritize buying e-copies, particularly since COVID), older editions in the stacks, or otherwise free on the open web.

• Our Zero Cost Heroes campaign aims to highlight instructors who are reducing costs for students while at the same time placing positive peer pressure on other instructors on campus. Our dream is to gain campus support to be able to identify/tag courses that are low and no cost so that students know ahead of time what they are registering for.

• Other workshops and initiatives aim to educate and bring awareness to issues of open educational practices with the hope of developing campus champions. For the last two years, we have used grant monies to sponsor educators, staff, and students to attend the Open Ed conference. This year, we have two dates scheduled for follow up conversations after the conference.

• The River Campus Libraries (RCL)-led Access to Course Textbooks (ACT) Commitment seeks to create a more student-friendly environment. Ultimately, the course material is decided by faculty members. ACT is an effort to inform and support those choices by raising awareness of the limitations of using commercially published textbooks and, through University partnerships, provide students with more accessible alternatives. The current lack of accessible textbook alternatives for Rochester students is not a new issue, but one that’s been exacerbated by the pandemic. ACT is already addressing this by shining a light on existing open educational resources.

https://www.library.rochester.edu/services/open