Open Educational Resources (OER) at Montana State University

Just a few ideas to get started with open education.

• Learn Your Options
  • Federal Law requires campuses to make available all affordable options for textbooks before a student chooses what courses they want to register for.
  • Before you purchased at textbook, did you check the library eBook collections to see if it's already there?
  • Find out what initiatives are happening on campus with student government or clubs that you can be a part of.
• Capture student voices
  • Post-it Boards
    • #textbookbroke has a lot of ideas that campuses have used.
    • How much did you spend board. How much by discipline board.
    • I just spent signs. Another example.
  • Get their story
    • Have students write thank you letters to faculty using free course materials. Create posters of these to post around campus.
    • Ask students to write notes to faculty/admin/state higher ed/etc. about their affordability struggles. Make a display physically or virtually of these. Invite faculty and admin to come and see what students are saying. Example of postcard to use. How this may look.
    • Social Media outreach
    • Create a hashtag or handle for your campus OER outreach. Keep it simple and uniform so that students have a regulated method to respond. Ontario example.
  • Create Videos
    • Tips to get started
    • University of Minnesota example.
    • Other OEN Community videos for inspiration.
• Survey Students. TRAILS conducted a statewide survey of students. Get some community feedback from your campus alone.
  • TRAILS survey questions
  • How to get started with a student survey.
• Learn more about student rights and needs for course materials.
  • Student Course Materials Checklist

The BCcampus Open Education Advocacy Guide for Student Leaders explains the benefits of OER and provides guidance on how students can help promote OER adoption.