Open Source & OER

This project is about designing 81 high enrollment, important general education, and pre-college courses for face-to-face, hybrid and/or online delivery, to improve course completion rates, lower textbook costs for students, provide new resources for faculty to consider using in their courses, and for our college system to fully engage the global open educational resources discussion.

Who Will Benefit from these Courses? Important: adoptions of the courses (in whole or in part) is not mandated and is completely up to colleges and individual faculty members.

• Students will engage up-to-date, effective courses and learning activities.
• Students will see significant reductions in their textbook costs.
• Faculty will benefit from the support and expertise of colleagues in their course design processes.
• Faculty will enhance their personal capability to identify, mobilize and extend knowledge globally.

A Digital Inventory of Florida's Archives and Collections

The Florida Open Academic Library provides a statewide searchable database that includes an inventory of digital archives and collections held by public postsecondary education institutions (§ F.S. 1006.73 (2)(a)4.). Through collaboration with Florida Virtual Campus Library Services member libraries, we are pleased to bring you over one million unique and valuable resources to discover. Developed to include multiple platforms across our members, harvested content includes all collections contained in the Inventory of Digital Libraries and Collections Held by Florida Public Universities and State Colleges 2019 Update, all collections within FLVC Library Services hosted platforms (i.e. FL-Islandora, Florida OJ), and identified OER collections (i.e. Open Textbook Library, Open Stax) held by Florida institutions.

Textbook Information HEOA section 112 HEA section 133

Effective date: July 1, 2010

The HEOA supports the academic freedom of faculty to select high quality course materials for their students while imposing several new provisions to ensure that students have timely access to affordable course materials at postsecondary institutions receiving Federal financial assistance. These provisions support that effort and include the following:

• When textbook publishers provide information on a college textbook or supplemental material to faculty in charge of selecting course materials at postsecondary institutions, that information must be in writing (including electronic communication) and must include
  • the price of the textbook;
  • the copyright dates of the three previous editions (if any);
  • a description of substantial content revisions;
  • whether the textbook is available in other formats and if so, the price to the institution and to the general public;
  • the separate prices of textbooks unbundled from supplemental material; and
  • to the maximum extent possible, the same information for custom textbooks.
• To the maximum extent practicable, an institution must include on its Internet course schedule for required and recommended textbooks and supplemental material
  • the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and retail price;
  • if the ISBN is not available, the author, title, publisher, and copyright date; or
  • if such disclosure is not practicable, the designation “To Be Determined.”

  If applicable, the institution must include on its written course schedule a reference to the textbook information available on its Internet schedule and the Internet address for that schedule.

• A postsecondary institution must provide the following information to its college bookstores upon request by such college bookstore:
  • the institution’s course schedule for the subsequent academic period; and
  • for each course or class offered, the information it must include on its Internet course schedule for required and recommended textbooks and supplemental material, the number of students enrolled, and the maximum student enrollment.
• Institutions disclosing the information they must include on their Internet course schedules for required and recommended textbooks and supplemental material are encouraged to provide information on
  • renting textbooks;
  • purchasing used textbooks;
  • textbook buy-back programs; and
  • alternative content delivery programs.

The HEOA also requires the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study the implementation of this section and report to Congress (See Non-institutional Studies, Reports, and Summits, U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) Studies and Reports, Textbook Information)

The Secretary is prohibited from regulating on this section of the HEA, but will monitor institutions and review student complaints relating to these provisions.

Please see pages 34 & 35 of the "Dear Colleague" letter on the HEOA website for more information.

NSTA is a dedicated and passionate community of professionals, who believe that an appreciation for science can be fostered in every student and a passion for professional growth lies within every educator. Our vision is a world where science literacy and education are recognized as vital to the future of our society and each member of our team—staff and leadership alike—strives to make that vision a reality.

The NCCSTS Case Collection, created and curated by the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, on behalf of the University at Buffalo, contains nearly a thousand peer-reviewed case studies on a variety of topics in all areas of science.