CAL$ Resources

Chico Affordable Learning Solutions (CAL$) has compiled this collection of OER and free resources for the CSU, Chico campus

CAL$ Team

Beth Shook
Faculty, Department of Anthropology
AB798 Co-Coordinator
bashook@csuchico.edu

Edward A. Roualdes
Faculty, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
AB798 Co-Coordinator
eroualdes@csuchico.edu

Technology and Learning Program
Meriam Library, 457
530-898-6167
tlp@csuchico.edu

Wildcat Store Textbook Team
1390TXT@Follett.com
530-898-6966

Open Educational Resources (OER)

OER: Free and Open resources for the classroom

"OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge." Atkins, Brown, & Hammond (2007)

On the left are links to Open Educational Resources (OER), such as:

  • Open Textbooks
  • Open Courses
  • Search tools to find OERs
  • Instructions on how to link to eBooks and journal articles provided by Meriam Library.

Why use OER?
For educators, OERs remove the legal uncertainty and the time and cost of getting copyright clearance for resources. It is easy to find free and open materials for your courses;  many search engines now have plug-ins that limit results to materials with open use Creative Commons licenses.

OER are much more than just learning materials. They also now include open software tools (such as Moodle and Kaltura), and intellectual property tools (such as Creative Commons licenses.)

OpenStax textbooks is a leading provider of Open textbooks. All of their textbooks have Creative Commons "BY"  attribution licenses that allow the books to be freely repurposed and reused, as long as OpenStax is credited with a BY license.

 

For more on OER, see Wikieducator and The Babson Survey Research Group 2018 report.

Textbook Alternatives Project (TAP)

TAP's primary goal is to encourage faculty to replace their high cost commercial textbooks for free or lower-cost alternatives such as OERs, library resources, digital textbooks, or self-authored content, while also maintaining or improving the quality of student learning. Our TAP program is part of the local Chico Affordable Learning Solutions program (CAL$), which is part of the CSU-wide Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) program.

For more information, see the the TAP website.

Meriam Library | CSU, Chico