Instructional Innovation and Engagement

Affordable Content and Open Educational Resources

Lower Course Material Costs for Students

Day-One Access Program through the CSU Bookstore: Providing first-day access to digital course materials at a reduced cost.
Transitioning from Print Textbooks to Electronic Text through Unizin: Colorado State University’s membership in the Unizin Consortium provides access to the digital version of your textbooks at significantly reduced cost to students. Through the Redshelf eReader Platform, students have first-day access to course materials. Contact Stan Kruse for more information.

Open Educational Resources

What is OER?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.

UNESCO definition

Where can I learn more about OER?

The CSU library has an extensive OER guide where you can learn more about OER at Colorado State University.

Where can I find OER?

Several OER catalogs are available for finding OER course materials and textbooks. A few are list below.

Open Textbook Library: Colorado State University is a member of the Open Textbook Network, which “promotes access, affordability, and student success through the use of open textbooks” (Open Textbook Network).
BC Campus OpenEd
Directory of Open Access Books
OASIS (Openly Available Sources Integrated Search)
OER Commons
OpenStax
Open SUNY Textbooks
Pressbooks Directory

Where can I create and publish OER?

Course materials can be created and published using CSU’s Pressbooks publishing platform. Access to Pressbooks is another benefit of the university’s Unizin membership.