This month’s blog post was contributed by Abbey K. Elder, Open Access & Scholarly Communication Librarian at Iowa State University.

Introduction

Because many open education programs focus on saving students money, early OER efforts tended to support the development and marketing of OER intended for high enrollment, general education courses. However, over the years, educators and institutions have developed open textbooks and other OER to support a broader range of courses, including higher level courses, less common electives, and even graduate-level courses. In this month’s blog post, I’ll be featuring a few OER that fall within these categories, to help highlight the breadth of materials available today.  

Featured Textbooks and Modules

Tako Lako! Beginner-level Croatian Textbook: Tako lako, which translates into English as “It’s So Easy,” is a free online textbook intended for beginner-level learners of Croatian. The textbook aims to develop intercultural communicative competence and builds upon current research on culture teaching in the foreign language classroom. The website for the book includes additional information for educators, including an overview of the textbook’s structure and contents, a course planning guide, and a searchable phrasebook. 

GEOG 30: Environment and Society in a Changing World: Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences has been developing and sharing open educational resources for nearly 20 years now. This example is a set of modules supporting the course Environment and Society in a Changing World. It includes both readings and written assignments across 10 modules.

Additional courses like this can be found on Penn State’s Repository of Open and Affordable Materials (ROAM).

The Psychology of Exceptional Children: Education and upper-level Psychology courses are also areas where OER can be particularly useful, both generally (as cost saving measures) and because instructors can update materials as needed. This textbook discusses the role of teachers and clinicians who work together to support exceptional students in various clinical settings, including public schools in the United States. Exceptional students are defined as children and adolescents whose educational needs are not met by traditional educational programs and include students who are at risk for delayed development and those with specific disabilities. Exceptional students also include those who are capable of performing at higher levels than others of the same age.

Introduction to Engineering Drawing and Design: This OER, available on Libretexts, was developed by a team of educators, librarians, instructional designers, students, and staff from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the team developed these materials for engineering students entering their first engineering graphics classes. The content is organized into four modules: Module A introduces the foundations of technical drawing, including line types, units and scale, drawing tools, and geometric constructions; Modules B and C cover parallel projections; Module D focuses on fabrication/3D printing, with an appendix for instructors. It includes lecture notes, images, videos, exercises, interactive elements, and AR visualizations. 

Full Stack Web Development for Beginners: A Second Programming Course: This book is a crash course in the foundational concepts, architectures, protocols, and languages of full stack web development. It is suitable for an introductory web development course in the second semester (and beyond) of any computer science or software engineering program. The reader is assumed to have already completed an introductory programming course in a procedural or object-oriented programming language such as Python or Java. No further background is needed. 

Side note: It also has some of my favorite custom design work in an open textbook!

Computational Music Theory and Analysis: While many of the resources shared in this blog post are introductory in nature, OER for more advanced courses are also available! This example comes from MIT, and is a full open course for Computational Music Theory and Analysis, an undergraduate/graduate course that presents major approaches to computational music theory and musicology in the symbolic (score-based) domain. Programming assignments are in Python. Videos, lecture notes, assignments, and exams are all available via the MIT OpenCourseWare site.

Accessible Appalachia: An Open-Access Introduction to Appalachian Studies: History and Cultural Studies are often some of the hardest courses to cover with open materials, since the courses may require a specific book from a specific author, especially for more niche topics. For those teaching Appalachian Studies courses, you may be excited to see this open access book! This book offers an interdisciplinary perspective and is ideal for introductory classes in Appalachian Studies, covering Appalachian artistic, cultural, historical, natural, and social development.

Discussion

I’ve featured just a few OER in this blog post, but there are many, many more to explore! This list includes modules, books, and even full courses with assignments across both institutional and open source platforms for OER development. Whether you are interested in these courses or not, I hope they’ve given you a good idea of the breadth and depth of OER available today. While it is great that we have many options for introductory Algebra, Psychology, U.S. History, and other general education courses, I am glad to see that educators continue to develop and share other teaching materials widely for those who might benefit from their use!