Free and affordable course materials for Oregon State University faculty

Explore vetted, external repositories hosted by trusted institutions worldwide to locate textbooks and other openly licensed course materials that are ready for immediate academic adoption. If you need help locating appropriate OER, make an appointment with Stefanie Buck, director of Oregon State’s Open Educational Resources Unit.

Use these deep meta-search engines to cross-reference multiple external databases simultaneously when hunting for niche subjects.

The Valley Library offers an extensive collection of licensed e-books and digital journals available for course integration. While these materials are generally not openly licensed, they are fully funded by the university and free for students to use. Contact the library to find specific materials for your curriculum.

OER are free, openly licensed materials — such as textbooks, full courses, modules and assignments — that expand access to knowledge. They grant all students day-one access to learning materials, drastically reducing education costs and empowering faculty to freely adapt and customize content to fit their specific teaching needs.

Oregon State led the development of A Guide to Open Textbook Essential and Exemplary Features in collaboration with the Open Education Network. This comprehensive resource can be used to evaluate, adapt or create peer-reviewed, high-quality open textbooks. Explore the OER Essentials guide »

Many open educational resources undergo a rigorous academic peer-review process identical to traditional commercial textbook publishers, though individual review standards vary. A high-quality open textbook will explicitly state its peer-review status, review type and the credentials of the reviewers.

The original author is responsible for updates. High-quality OER digital documentation includes a version control table at the end of the open textbook to log updates.

Instructional effectiveness of OER meets or exceeds traditional commercial materials. A decade of research shows that students perform as well, if not better, when using openly licensed materials.

• Data summaries: View student performance metrics on The Review Project website.
• Research databases: Search over 1,100 articles in the AAC&U OER Research Database or more than 2,860 records in the OER Knowledge Cloud.
• Quick read: Check out the OER Mythbusting from SPARC.

• Day-one access: Eliminates learning delays for students waiting on financial aid or working extra hours to afford books.
• Full adaptability: Faculty can legally modify content to match a 10-week OSU term or incorporate locally relevant material.
• Student savings: Over 60% of students reported not purchasing at least one required textbook because of cost. Replacing a $100 textbook in a 45-student course section helps avoid a total of $4,500 of textbook costs in a single term.
• Academic gains: OER use correlates with lower course drop rates, higher student engagement and predictable lesson planning.

• At OSU: Over 58 faculty members have authored OER textbooks, and numerous others adopt or adapt them.
• Nationally: OpenStax reports textbooks are used by 70% of US higher education institutions, saving nine million students $835 million since 2012.
• Faculty trends: A 2024 Bay View Analytics survey of 3,447 educators found that 41% utilize OER materials in their courses.
• Global impact: Track international integration via the UNESCO guide on Open Educational Resources or the OER World Map.

OER content typically carries a Creative Commons (CC) license, which legally permits the public to share and modify the work under conditions set by the author. Because permissions vary by license type, contact Oregon State’s Open Educational Resources Unit for a consultation.

Not automatically. While free for students to access through university licensing, most of these materials carry "All Rights Reserved" copyrights and cannot be modified by faculty. However, university-licensed library resources remain excellent alternative tools for eliminating student out-of-pocket costs.

Most publishers of OER textbooks offer students the option to download the textbook in a PDF format and print it via a local copy shop.

Bound, low-cost print versions of major titles (like those available through OpenStax) can be bought on Amazon.