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UTSA Libraries & Textbooks
License
UTSA Libraries & Textbooks: Innovative Strategies to Support Roadrunners by the UTSA Libraries Strategic Collections Team is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Images: Attribution
All images on this guide provided courtesy of Pixabay or UTSA PhotoShelter: royalty free and no attribution required.
Legislation
States are passing transparency legislation around OER and inclusive access adoption. In 2017, the Texas Legislature passed Texas Senate Bill 810. This section outlines expectations of SB 810 and documents UTSA’s compliance.
SB 810 (2017): requires that each institution of higher education compile a course schedule indicating whether the textbook required for each course is an open educational resource. Institutions shall make reasonable efforts to disseminate information to students, including the availability of courses and sections of courses that require or recommend only open educational resources. This bill also established the open educational resources grant program to encourage faculty to adopt and develop courses that use only open educational resources.
OER Transparency
Low Cost Textbook Course: Total Required Learning Materials Cost <= $40
Free Textbook Course: Total Required Learning Materials Cost=$0
Free Textbooks
Low Cost Textbooks
SB 810 (2017): requires that each institution of higher education compile a course schedule indicating, among other things, whether the textbook required for each course is an open educational resource. Institutions shall make reasonable efforts to disseminate information to students, including the availability of courses and sections of courses that require or recommend only open educational resources. This bill also established the open educational resources grant program to encourage faculty at institutions to adopt and develop courses that use only open educational resources.
To comply with SB 810 (2017) reporting requirements, the Office of the Registrar, the Rowdy Campus Bookstore, and UTSA Libraries collaborate to:
- Identify courses that use Open Educational Resources (OER)
- Provide transparency: marking these courses as Free Textbooks courses in course schedule
Complying with SB 810 (2017) required the creation of a reporting framework in order to provide transparency for UTSA students. Since there is no automation across university data systems, the cross-campus team created an informational guide that serves as a primer on the legislation and links to reporting forms for faculty to indicate whether their courses have free and low cost textbooks. Using the oer@utsa.edu email, the UTSA Libraries emails department chairs, grant recipients, and departmental admins in advance of Spring, Summer and Fall registration per the schedule below.
UTSA Libraries shares reported courses with the Rowdy Campus Bookstore and the Registrar for marking in the course schedule on a weekly basis leading up to registration for the upcoming semester. Since the legislation speaks to transparency at the time of registration, planning and consistency is crucial to this process.
| Semester | Registration Opens |
|---|---|
| Fall | April 1st |
| Spring | October 1st |
| Summer | March 1st |
- Report Free TextbooksQualtrics reporting form for OER.
- Report Low Cost TextbooksQualtrics reporting form for low cost textbooks.
| Attribute | Definition | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Free Textbooks | Courses with total learning materials cost of zero that are Creative Commons licensed. Ensures UTSA's compliance with TEC 51.542. | Open Educational Resources from Open Textbook Library, |
| Low Cost Textbooks | Filters for courses with total learning materials cost of $40 or less. |
Open access: free, publicly accessible resources that may be copyright-protected. Examples: YouTube videos, freely accessible websites, etc. Online resources from the UTSA Libraries: e-books, streaming videos, etc. that are no additional cost and available to students remotely. A collection of resources from copyright-protected resources that are provided to students at no cost by applying fair use: no more than 20% of each resource is used at any given point through the semester. Example: chapters from different print books scanned and made available to your students in Blackboard. Learning resources that are copyright-protected that cost $40 or less. Example: a required novel or several required novels for a literature course with a combined total purchase price of $40 or less. |
Simple Syllabus
UTSA is piloting Simple Syllabus is some UTSA courses in Fall 2022. Draft language for OER and SB 810 compliance is included below.
Open Educational Resources (OER): SB 810
OER are free textbooks that are either in the public domain or Creative Commons licensed for free use, reuse, modification, and sharing.” OpenStax and Open Textbook Library are examples. OER support student success because they are:
- Free
- Available on Class Day One
- Easily and continuously accessible
UTSA Libraries’ Adopt a Free Textbook grant program has awarded 138 OER grants to faculty, saving $10 million for UTSA students.
Apply the Free and Low Cost Textbook filters, below, to find these courses during registration.
Learn more at Report Affordable Textbooks: Transparency for Roadrunners.
| Attribute | Definition | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Free Textbooks | Courses with total learning materials cost of zero that are Creative Commons licensed. Ensures UTSA's compliance with TEC 51.542. | Open Educational Resources from Open Textbook Library, OpenStax, or any other Creative Commons licensed learning material that allows for free access and re-use. |
| Low Cost Textbooks | Filters for courses with total learning materials cost of $40 or less. |
Open access: free, publicly accessible resources that may be copyright-protected. Examples: YouTube videos, freely accessible websites, etc. Online resources from the UTSA Libraries: e-books, streaming videos, etc. that are no additional cost and available to students remotely. A collection of resources from copyright-protected resources that are provided to students at no cost by applying fair use: no more than 20% of each resource is used at any given point through the semester. Example: chapters from different print books scanned and made available to your students in Canvas. Learning resources that are copyright-protected that cost $40 or less. Example: a required novel or several required novels for a literature course with a combined total purchase price of $40 or less. |
Adopt a Free Textbook (For Grant Awarded Courses Only)
This course is part of UTSA Libraries' Adopt a Free Textbook program, a collaboration between your professor and the library to encourage faculty adoption of free textbooks into UTSA courses. Open educational resources (OER) are textbooks and learning materials that are available at no cost to students, accessible from mobile devices, and available from class day one. Research has shown that OER can improve student engagement and course outcomes.
Additional Reading
SPARC. (2021). OER State Policy Tracker. Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.