As you know, the cost of textbooks and course materials continues to rise, adding a financial barrier for our students to enroll in courses and successfully complete their degree. Using open educational resources is one way in which instructors can have a direct impact on the cost of textbooks and on their students’ ability to have the course materials by the first day of class.

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use, allowing anyone to freely use, revise, and share the resource. OER range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio clips and video clips.

Benefits of OER Include

• Academic freedom
  • Freedom to choose your course materials
  • Adopt materials to fit the needs of your course
  • Easily update content with most current information
• Many OER are peer-reviewed and offer ancillary materials with quiz questions, slides, and lesson plans
• Access to materials
  • Access on day 1 of class and for as long as you want them
  • Convenient 24/7 digital access
  • Option to print for a low cost
• Open pedagogy
  • Ability to customize materials in support of equity, diversity, and inclusion
  • Students have an active role in creating information for others rather than just consumers of information
• Support student success
  • OER specifically support Pell Grant recipients, first generation students, and part-time students
  • OER improve retention rates and reduce drop, failure, & withdrawal rates

Support is Available

• Hannon Library and the OER Advisory Group promote textbook affordability on campus
  Holly Gabriel, Open Access & Government Information Librarian, is available to assist instructors
• Holly Gabriel, Open Access & Government Information Librarian, is available to assist instructors with locating OER. She can be reached at gabrielh@sou.edu or by phone at 541-552-6595
• For more information, please visit our OER Guide, which includes information about stipends for instructors, collections of open textbooks, and using library materials to support your courses

To celebrate AAPI Heritage Month, we interviewed SOU Associate Professor and Author Precious Yamaguchi, Ph.D, about her work, as well as some of her favorite books by AAPI authors. 

 

What is your favorite thing about being a professor at SOU?

“I think the students at SOU are so unique, fun, and I love getting to know the students individually and as a class when we start building our learning community together throughout the quarter.”

 

What was the experience of researching and writing your novel, Experiences of Japanese American Women during and after World War II: Living in Internment Camps and Rebuilding Life Afterwards, like?

“It took me nearly eight years to write this book and I interviewed 16 Japanese American individuals who were in their 70s, 80s, and 90s – all of these individuals had experienced imprisonment in the World War II Japanese American internment camps. I had to be both patient and diligent in writing this book. I had to be patient because I needed each of these individuals to gain my trust in telling their story, so I met with many of these individuals numerous times. I also had to be diligent in my writing because many of them were passing away since some of them were in their 80s and 90s. I wanted them to read and see the finished outcome of their stories included in my book. This book was also personal for me since all of my grandparents were imprisoned in the internment camps when they were teenagers.”

 

What are some of your favorite books written by or about members of the AAPI community?

“I have a lot of favorite books by members of the AAPI community, my recent favorites are Jackson Bliss’s Counterfactual Love Stories and Other Experiments (Jackson Bliss is a hapa writer, meaning mixed Japanese American) and Jo Koy’s Mixed Plate. I used to work for an Asian American magazine a long time ago and our organization was also an Asian American talent agency and we helped Jo Koy get his start as a comedian. I also enjoy more academic-type AAPI writers such as Radhika Gajjala and her book Digital Diasporas, Margaret Rhee’s Love, Robot, and Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart is so good!”