October is Open Access Month. Throughout the month, guest contributors will present their perspectives on the value of open access to research, scholarship and innovation at The University of Texas at Austin.

This installment provided by Sata Sathasivan, Senior Lecturer, Biology Instructional Office.

I have been using open educational resources (OER) in biology as supplemental instructional sources for many years. These included animations, videos, simulations and public databases of DNA and protein. These resources are constantly evolving and they complement well with any level of teaching.

Recently, I started using a biology textbook published by Open Stax based at Rice University for my introductory biology classes successfully. While a publisher’s popular textbook may cost the students up to $250 each semester, OpenStax textbooks are free to download a PDF and have a nominal cost ($40) for printed versions. Several students liked this free textbook and I received only a few complaints about the inadequacies of this textbook to explain a particular concept. Overall, it was well received by the students and they found this very helpful.

This free textbook can be supplemented with other open educational resources that can be found online in various sites such as https://www.oercommons.org, and if you want to explore more OER sites, check this site.

The only concern that I have about OERs is the time it takes to check them for quality and consistency with your teaching, and the time involved in making the structure for them to be seamlessly integrated into the course.