Orienting Learners to Your OER

Once your OER is ready to be shared, attention shifts to how learners will first encounter it. Opening a real trail system means making the routes visible, clarifying how the paths connect, and helping visitors understand how to use the space as it was intended. This chapter offers guidance on how to orient learners to your OER, explain why it was created or adopted, and clarify how students should engage with it throughout the course.

Front Matter vs. Course Introduction

When adopting or creating an Open Educational Resource (OER), it is important to distinguish between introducing the OER within the textbook itself and introducing the OER to students at the start of a course. Both introductions serve different purposes, and both are necessary.

OER Front Matter (typically in the front matter in Pressbooks)
This introduction explains the purpose, values, and scope of the OER as a public, openly licensed resource. Guidance for this already exists in Pressbooks and should not be duplicated in course materials. For guidance on how to craft this introduction, see Introducing Your OER.

Course-Level Introduction (in the syllabus, LMS, video, or live class)
This introduction helps students understand that the OER is their course textbook, how to access and use it, and why they are being asked to engage with (and give feedback on) it during the term. This step is especially critical when the OER is embedded directly into the LMS, where students may otherwise mistake it for ordinary course pages.

Where to Introduce the OER

In the Syllabus

Faculty should introduce the OER in their syllabus, listed where a textbook would normally appear with a note that it is an OER.

In the Learning Management System

Faculty should introduce the OER in a Start Here or Orientation Module in the LMS. This could look like a short page titled something like “Where’s Our Textbook?”

Directly to Their Students

Faculty should also introduce their OER directly to their students. The delivery will look different depending on the type of course.

Asynchronous courses

For courses that do not meet synchronously, creating and embedding a brief walkthrough video in the introductory module of the course that introduces the OER is the simplest and clearest method.

Synchronous courses

For courses that meet synchronously, providing a short explanation and visual walkthrough during the first in-person or synchronous meeting class session alongside quick reminders during the term works best.

Giving this introduction in multiple places is a good idea. Repetition across formats reduces confusion and increases student uptake (Bliss et al., 2013).

What to Tell Students

Listed below are key points to tell your students about the OER along with some examples of conversation starters shared by the OER for Social Justice faculty teams.

What is an OER  

Explain what an Open Education Resource is.

Why you created the OER

• Share the purposes of the OER for Social Justice project (DEIA, interactivity, accessibility, open pedagogy, peer review).
• Explain why you did this work (this will be unique for each of you)

“One of my classes was explicitly focused on genre and “discourse communities,” and in that class I was able to thematize the idea of textbooks as “genre.” We discussed what students see as the purpose and audience of textbooks, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of the textbooks that they have interacted with in the past. That provided really useful context for grounding what it is we were attempting to do with the OER–touching, of course, on cost, but also able to dive more into the idea of “modality.” For example, we discussed how many fields have an implicit bias against images, framing them as a lower-order form of symbolic communication (i.e, that books with pictures are less advanced or complex than books with just text). We were able to challenge that assumption, in terms of how people actually learn best and what makes learning more enjoyable (and thus why we incorporate images and videos into our OER). Similarly, we talked about the interactive components, student reflections, and student work in terms of how they challenged/corrected traditional approaches to textbooks formats.” – Leigh Meredith

You’ve likely captured this already in your OER’s front matter introduction, but consider revising the guiding questions and reflection in Introducing Your OER.

Where to find the OER

Explain how to navigate through the OER by showing the OER cover, how the OER will be “linked out to the Pressbooks site” from the course, or “embedded within the LMS and looks like this”.

“Our original OER was the Hidden Voices text which we designed as a companion to any General Psychology textbook. To ensure students found it easy and intuitive to navigate the two texts, we provided the assigned readings in multiple areas of our learning management system (Canvas). Specifically, readings were linked on the schedule in the simple syllabus as well as in a study guide posted in multiple places on Canvas. The study guide, in particular, helped us combine learning objectives and terms across texts; students reported that it was the most important document for navigating the class successfully.” – Yang Team

How your OER benefits students

• Explain how the OER removes cost barriers (free and theirs beyond the end of the course).
• Explain that it can be improved for future users based on their feedback.
• Demonstrate how to provide feedback via your OER’s contact form (posted on your Accessibility Statement page).
• Optional: Offer students extra credit to locate errors or otherwise share their thoughts to incentivize student feedback.

“Students were very interested in getting to provide feedback on a textbook that would be more customized to our curriculum and very open to share their thoughts on what worked and what could be improved.” – Sabatier Team

“I actively invited my students to critique the OER as they read it. Giving them a sense of joint ownership in the work made them that much more excited about it and the class in general. They particularly loved how I could implement changes immediately based on their suggestions. This element of malleability in the text was extremely rewarding both for me and my students. Students knew they were part of the formation of the text and that was very empowering.” – Jessy Livingstone

• Explain that the OER can be more relevant to students’ lived experiences and identities with the inclusion of their work (open pedagogy).

“Through the OER, students were also more easily able to see models of student work. Plus, that enabled me to talk about the textbook as a potential repository for new student work (e.g, podcasts) and a way to reach an “authentic audience” beyond the classroom.” — Leigh Meredith on her team’s plans to continue to incorporate more student work

• Explain that the OER helps learners stay engaged and support understanding with interactive activities and self-check questions (satisfaction and success).

Research suggests that OER are most effective when they are not only adopted, but also clearly introduced, made visible to students, and intentionally integrated into the course. In a large multi-institutional study, students in courses using OER as primary materials had improved grades and lower DFW rates.^[1] Other research found that students value OER most when instructors clearly explain what the resource is, how to use it, and why it was selected.^[2] Taken together, these studies underscore that the benefits of OER are strengthened when instructors clearly communicate their purpose and intentionally embed them into the course.