USask Community Plays Major Role in Creation of OER

Screen capture of the Introduction to Psychology text created at USask.

Open educational resources (OER) have become very popular at USask in the ten years since the adoption of the first open textbook for a large course. Students at USask have saved millions of dollars in the past decade, including close to $2 million during the 2024-25 academic year.

While several instructors use OER created by instructors at other institutions, many open textbooks used in USask courses were made here. USask instructors, staff, and students have adapted or produced over 30 open textbooks.

Among those books created by instructors are:

• Psychology and Abnormal Psychology
• Introduction to Organic Chemistry
• The Lymphatic System of The Dog
• Digging Into Canadian Soil Science (a cross-Canada collaboration)
• Cultivating Change: A Prairie Guide to Sustainability and Learning Practices
• Effective Professional Communication: A Rhetorical Approach

Books created by students as part of open pedagogy projects within courses include three in Education, one in Indigenous Studies, and one in English.

• Victorian Prose & Poetry (English 334)
• Sharing Our Knowledge: Best Practices for Supporting English Language Learners in Schools (ECUR 415)
• Project Management for Instructional Designers (ETAD 874)
• Indigenous Self-Determination through Mitho Pimachesowin: Perspectives from Northern Saskatchewan (INDG 410/810)

You can view the entire USask open textbook catalogue at openpress.usask.ca.

We will move to a new instance of Pressbooks (our open textbook platform) in collaboration with the University of Regina and Saskatchewan Polytechnic early in 2025, but these links will continue to work. The new catalogue will also contain books created and adapted at USask and those institutions. 

Several open textbook projects have received funding to support the development or adaptation of the material. If you are interested in creating or adapting an open textbook on your own, with colleagues, or with students, please email the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning to find out about funding available to support such a project.

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^{Title image credit: Brando.ltd on Pexels.com}

This resource is shared by the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning (GMCTL), University of Saskatchewan, under a CC BY-NC-SA license.