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Open Education: Home

A guide to open educational resources, open pedagogy, and the open ed movement at Gettysburg College

The Open Education Movement

The Open Education movement seeks to improve student learning through the use of free and openly licensed course materials - textbooks, exercises, assignments - that can be customized by teachers and easily accessed by all students regardless of their financial means. Switching to such Open Educational Resources (OER), like textbooks from OpenStax and OpenIntro, gives faculty the freedom to revise and remix content to match their plan for the course. OER also allow students to engage with the text in new and pedagogically powerful ways that help them recognize themselves as producers of information rather than just consumers. Open Pedagogy is the practice of employing OER to support student learning in ways that are impossible when using traditional, closed course materials.

JCCTL OER/Zero-Cost Course Conversion Grant

The Johnson Center for Creative Teaching & Learning is offering Open Educational Resources (OER)/Zero-Cost Course Conversion Grants in collaboration with Musselman Library. This purpose of this grant mechanism is to support course instructors who wish to replace commercial textbooks or other required class materials with OER or other resources that are entirely free to students. Assigning zero-cost materials equalizes access and ensures that all students can have the materials they need to learn. Using OER or other free materials benefits all students and especially our most vulnerable ones.

Applications from all disciplines are encouraged and reviewed on a rolling basis. Learn more on the JCCTL website.

Gettysburg College Student Textbook Surveys

Key findings from Fall 2022 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey

  1. Students spent less on books in 2022 than they did in 2019
  2. All students are employing more strategies to save on book costs – and feeling more negative effects
  3. Certain groups are disproportionately affected by book costs (first-generation students, Pell-eligible students, international students)
  4. Books are usually purchased with out-of-pocket money
  5. Students think instructors pay attention to costs but that Gettysburg College does not
  6. $50 is (still) a reasonable cost per class

Read more about textbook surveys at Gettysburg College

2022 – Students from Gettysburg + 10 other liberal arts colleges surveyed

2019 – Gettysburg students surveyed