Faculty Publications Available at No Cost Through University Libraries

The Global Campus and University Libraries have collaborated with U of A faculty since 2017 to create open access textbooks for their courses. These are available not only to their students, but to all online users at no cost. Earlier publications are housed in the university's institutional repository, while more recent texts can be viewed on the U of A's Pressbooks website.  

While these open textbooks are course-specific and designed primarily for U of A students, they are accessible and beneficial to a wide variety of audiences. For example, the Introduction to Apparel Production Workbook by Laurie Apple contains sewing patterns for tote bags, skirts, shirts and pants. Creating Cultural Competence by Jacquelyn Wiersma-Mosley and Margaret Miller Butcher provides tools that can be beneficial for high school students, organizations and community training sessions. And Dave Bostwick's Journalistic Skills for Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation serves as a guidebook for anyone wanting to improve their writing skills.  

"By writing the Introduction to Apparel Production Workbook OER, I was able to save the Apparel Merchandising and Product Development students approximately $125 in textbook fees," Apple said. "In addition, the former textbook did not have all the information needed for our students to be successful in our introduction to production course. The new OER workbook gives students step-by-step instructions as well as embedded videos of each project to support the in-class instructions and demonstrations." 

The spring 2024 call for proposals for the Open Educational Resources Course Conversion Program is currently underway, and applications will be accepted through March 27. Successful applicants can receive $4,500 for adapting open educational resources or $7,500 for creating their own.