The Importance of Marking OER in Follett DiscoverWhen you adopt textbooks through Follett Discover, you have the option to mark your course as using OER. This simple step has a powerful impact.
It promotes equity and access. Marking your course as OER or affordable immediately signals to students that cost will not be a barrier to their success in your class. Students from all economic backgrounds will have equal access to the materials they need, and they'll have that access from the very first day of class.
It helps students during registration. When students see that a course uses OER or costs $40 or less, they can factor this into their registration decisions. This transparency can help students balance their course load with their financial reality and may enable them to take additional credits they otherwise couldn't afford.
It celebrates your contribution to student success. Using OER and affordable course materials represents significant work on your part to redesign courses and select high-quality resources. Marking these courses allows the university to recognize and celebrate the positive impact you're making on student retention, success, and equity.
It helps NEIU support these efforts campus-wide. When we can track which courses use OER and affordable materials, we can calculate the cost savings to students each semester and demonstrate the collective impact of these efforts. This data helps us advocate for resources and support to expand affordable course materials across the university, and it helps us connect faculty who are doing this work so they can learn from and support one another.
Adopting textbooks through Follett Discover is a process you likely already use each semester. The system includes an option to mark courses that use OER, making it easy to communicate this information to students and help the university track the positive impact of these efforts.
The video tutorial below walks through the step-by-step process of adopting textbooks in Follett Discover and shows you exactly how to mark your course as using OER. Whether you're adopting traditional textbooks, OER, no textbook, or a mix of materials, this tutorial will guide you through the entire process.