Background

If faculty adopt a free textbook but would like the ease of a low-cost ancillary provider for their students, there are several options available. Often, these ancillary materials are a bigger consideration for instructors that teach high enrollment courses than the textbook itself, due to their time-saving features including auto-grading and grade-passback to Blackboard. While some of these ancillary resources are free, others are defined as low-cost and range from $10-25 per student for access. Many low cost third-party providers work as direct bills to the enrolled students: faculty list the resource information on their syllabi for students, who then subscribe individually and receive access to course materials after payment. While not comparable to OER’s barrier free model, these can still significantly reduce the cost of learning materials, resulting in a total course learning materials fee of $25 for a class that previously had a $300 textbook.

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Free to Students

Pressbooks Results

Pressbooks Results is an add-on to UTSA Pressbooks that UTSA Libraries is exploring with UTSA Academic Innovation. We do not currently have access. The fee per student is $10, but students would not see a cost burden with this resource. If the stars align, UTSA Libraries is looking for creative ways to fund Pressbooks results for high enrollment courses that have been awarded through the UTSA Libraries Adopt a Free Textbook grant program. H5P activities can be integrated into any UTSA Pressbooks books currently.  Pressbooks Results would allow for the grades to be passed back to Blackboard for any H5P activities.  Stay tuned for further developments. See a demo of Pressbooks Results.

OpenStax Instructor Resources

OpenStax has great resources for faculty, and many faculty are unaware of these.  Faculty can request an instructor account, which is completely free. With that instructor account, faculty have access to PowerPoint slides, Blackboard course cartridges, and so much more. Create an instructor account and visit the Instructor Resources section for any Openstax book to uncover these treasures.

OpenStax Tutor

OpenStax Tutor is free to all Institutional Partner schools. UTSA is an Institutional Partner. OpenStax Tutor assists faculty with course creation. Among the many supports provided are: digital reading, personalized homework, a library of assessments, and LMS integration, OpenStax Tutor can be used for  online, hybrid, and in-person courses. OpenStax Tutor is currently available for the following books only: Anatomy and Physiology; The AP Physics Collection; Biology 2e; Biology for AP Courses; College Physics; Entrepreneurship; Introduction to Sociology 2e; Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; and Psychology 2e.

Low Cost for Students

OpenStax Technology Partners

OpenStax partners with many third-party technology homework providers. You can find a list of homework providers on each OpenStax book page under “Instructor Resources.”  OpenStax has a provider comparison called Tech Scout that may be helpful for sharing with faculty.

Lumen Learning

With Lumen courses, there is a fee of $25 per student.

• The Waymaker courses fully integrate into Blackboard with all of the ancillary materials.
• Faculty can change/delete what they want.
• Students have access to OER on day one; there is no paywall between the students and the course content.
• There is a small course fee that can be paid through the bookstore, usually $25/student. Not like a course fee as we think of them. Paying this fee opens up the quizzes. Everything else is open without payment. The Waymaker Faculty Guide is a great resource for additional information.
• An interesting thing about the Lumen courses is that they have a good deal of content that is licensed with a Creative Commons license. For example, license details are on each page of the Lumen Spanish course, at the bottom,  under licenses and attributions. So, for the Creative Commons licensed content specifically, depending on the level of the license, the content could be reused and eventually used to create a new OER published by UTSA faculty, including custom instructor content, with Pressbooks.

Online Homework Providers: Free and Low Cost