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OER@DVC

Advancing equity and student success by eliminating textbook costs.

OER for Faculty: Home

For Faculty

Why Use OER?

Lower Costs & Increase Equity

  • Eliminate textbook and course material costs for students.
  • Improve retention by removing cost barriers.
  • Students are more likely to succeed when they have access to resources from the first day of class. OER provides day one access.

Flexible & Accessible

  • Materials are free to download, keep, and reuse, so students never lose access.
  • OER are adaptable for students with accessibility needs.

Customizable & Current

  • Instructors can revise, remix, and adapt materials to fit course requirements.  
  • Content can be updated to reflect current events or new research.
  • OER expands teaching options, by allowing instructors to include multimedia and remixed content.

Need Help?

Contact your OER team to schedule a one-on-one consultation. 

How to Use OER?

Interested in exploring, using, or creating Open Educational Resources (OER)? Ready to make your courses more affordable, flexible, and equitable?

4CD offers a self-paced professional development course for faculty to learn the foundations of OER, copyright and licensing, accessibility, and equitable course design. 

You'll learn how to find and evaluate high-quality OER, navigate licensing, and design accessible, student-centered materials that support success from day one.

Frequently Asked Questions

OER stands for “Open Educational Resources.” These are openly licensed (usually through Creative Commons) and free for anyone to access. OER can be adapted, edited, or remixed to fit your teaching needs. All OER materials are zero-cost to students. ZTC stands for “Zero Textbook Cost.” A ZTC course ensures that students pay no additional fees for learning materials. ZTC courses often use OER as the primary method to eliminate cost, but other free resources, such as library books/ebooks, streaming videos, or online content can also be part of a ZTC course. Not all materials in a ZTC course are necessarily openly licensed. ZTC is the goal of making courses free for students, while OER is the primary method to achieve that goal.
Yes! A key part of using OER is deciding how to integrate it into your course. Canvas works well with OER and many OER provides offer Canvas integration. OER also gives you the flexibility to remix, adapt, and customize materials to fit your course and teaching style, making it easy to tailor the content to your Canvas shell. The 4cd OER repository contains many examples how faculty have used OER with Canvas. For help using OER in your course please [link to contacts] contact a librarian and consider enrolling in the 4CD OER course [link to course].
No! One of the biggest advantages of OER is flexibility. Open licenses allow course content to be updated easily as new research emerges, or current events become relevant. Traditional textbooks often lag and release expensive new editions when updated. Students won’t learn if they can’t afford the textbook. Research shows that students in courses using OER often perform as well or better than those in courses using commercial materials. As the OER movement grows more resources are being created to support students and instructors.
Link to OER course?
Link to contact us page?
Link to the OER@dvc page?