Resources for adopting or creating open or alternative materials

We've compiled a list of open educational resources that might be suitable for your application. If you need to modify one of these resources to fit your needs, view the Open Education Network's guide for modifying an open textbook.

In addition to the resources provided here, you can also contact the people and teams below with questions.

Brian Lindshield, Ph.D., department of food, nutrition, dietetics and health, at (785) 532-7848 or blindsh@k-state.edu
Colby Moorberg, Ph.D., department of agronomy, at (785) 532-7207 or moorberg@k-state.edu
K-State's Center for Scholarly Publishing at cads@k-state.edu

Open education resources repositories

SUNY’s Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a tool that searches for OER content from more than 70 sources.

The following repositories contain open textbooks and a wealth of other open educational resources.

Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT): MERLOT includes an ISBN search tool that allows you to enter a commercial textbook's ISBN, and it will show you open content on the topic.
Open Educational Resource (OER) Commons

Open textbook libraries and collections

The American Institute of Mathematic Open Textbook Initiative - Contains links to open textbooks that meet AIM’s evaluation criteria.
BCcampus OpenEd - Find or adapt textbooks that are openly licensed for reuse in 40 subject areas.
Boundless Courses - This catalog contains educational content originally curated by Boundless. Subjects include: accounting, art, biology, business, chemistry, communication, English, history, mathematics, physics, political science, psychology and sociology.
Community College Open Textbook Collaborative - A collection of open textbooks currently under consideration for review by the Community College Open Textbook Project.
LibreText - Begun at the University of California, Davis, LibreText offers resources across 12 disciplines (almost 400 items) and has dozens of contributing institutions.
Open Course Library - Textbooks, syllabi and assessments in 81 high enrollment college courses created through a Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges (SBCTC) grant.
Open Stax College - Through grant funding, Open Stax College is producing free open textbooks for high enrollment college courses using the ConneXions platform. Subjects include: college physics, introduction to sociology, biology, concepts of biology, and anatomy and physiology.
Milne Open Textbooks - A collection of open educational resources (OER) adopted across SUNY.
The University of Minnesota Open Education Initiative - UM created a catalog of open textbooks and is providing $500-$1,000 stipends for faculty members to review and adopt these resources.
Wikibooks - A collection of open-content textbooks built on a Wikipedia-like platform.

Textbook accessibility resources

BC Open Textbook Accessbility Toolkit - The Accessibility Toolkit provides the necessary resources for each content creator, instructional designer, educational technologist, librarian, administrator or teaching assistant to create a truly open and accessible textbook — one that is free and accessible for all students.

Digital Accessibility in Canvas - See the sidebar menu for accessibility information and how-to's for creating accessible PowerPoints, webpages, PDFs and more, all applicable whether you are posting to your Canvas courses or to other online platforms.

Courses
"Adopting Open Textbooks" Peer-to-Peer University, 2015. (Not an active course, but content is archived.) Includes the following learning outcomes:

Find, evaluate, modify and adopt an open textbook.
Build your network by finding and connecting with educators interested in open education and open textbooks.
Define and describe the following terms: open education, open educational resources (OER) and open textbooks.
Explain why open education is important.
Identify problems that open textbooks may address.
Correctly identify Creative Commons licenses and use them appropriately in the context of open textbooks.
Identify common challenges for faculty who want to use open textbooks and define strategies to help mitigate those challenges.

Examples of open textbooks created by K-State faculty

Communicating in Everyday Chinese (Chinese 101-502) by Li Yang
Your Journey to First-Year Success: A K-State First Companion Textbook by Brent Weaver, Mandi McKinley, Reagan Swank, Cydney Alexis, Tara Coleman, Jaime DeTour, Jessica Preston Kerr, Cheryl Rauh, R J. Youngblood and Mariya Vaughan
Principles of Biology (Biology 198) by Robert Bear, David Rintoul, Bruce Snyder, Martha Smith-Caldas, Christopher Herren and Eva Horne
Additional textbooks published by New Prairie Press