Open & Affordable Course Materials

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and available to everyone, and carry legal permission for open use. 

OER Course Materials Impact the Success of GW Students in Important Ways:

• Access - all students have equal access to required course materials on the first day of class
• Affordable - reducing the cost of learning materials provides an equitable opportunity for all students in a course to succeed
• Openly-licensed - allowing instructors to move beyond the constraints imposed by traditional learning materials and experiment with new forms of teaching.

GW Libraries & Academic Innovation is committed to supporting faculty in the use of course materials which are openly-licensed, affordable, and accessible for all GW students.

Areas of Faculty Support Include: 

• Librarians offer assistance locating open textbooks or library materials which can be used to replace costly traditional textbooks. If you would like us to find and compile a list of high quality open textbooks, or library e-books, for specific courses for you to review, just fill out the Request a Consultation Form and tell us about your course materials.
• Librarians can offer OER presentations and workshops at faculty department meetings and other gatherings. Invite a librarian to speak at your next meeting by emailing open@gwu.edu.
• The Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC) offers workshops on various topics to support faculty interested in adopting open educational resources. This includes workshops for faculty interested in receiving a $200 stipend to review an open textbook. Please visit the WRLC to find out more about upcoming events and register.
• GW Libraries’ Course Reserves includes a limited number of copies of textbooks used in high-enrollment GW courses. More information about how students can use these textbooks can be found on the Top Textbooks webpage. Information on how faculty can place books on reserve for a course can be found on the Course Reserves webpage.

LEARN MORE What are open and affordable course materials?

FIND ZERO COST COURSE MATERIALS Search trusted repositories to find open textbooks to suit your instructional needs.

SEARCH THE LIBRARY CATALOG to find e-books and journal articles suitable for your course.