“As the COVID-19 pandemic put additional stress on college students, many libraries and their institutions leveraged open educational resources (OER) to address the sudden disruption in learning environments across the country. OER are learning materials that are designed to be flexible, customizable, and always free to the student.
In new guidance for federal COVID relief funds released by the U.S. Department of Education, leveraging OER to expand access to free, high-quality textbooks is explicitly cited as a strategy to meet college students’ basic needs. The Department specifically points to OER as an example of a high-impact strategy that can build long-term capacity to ensure students have the tools they need to succeed in navigating challenges created by the pandemic.
From statewide consortiums to community and technical colleges, many institutions have already used federal COVID relief dollars for successful OER programs. The new federal guidance applies to the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF), which has distributed $76.2 billion to colleges and universities since 2020. Other OER projects have leveraged COVID relief funds from the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER) and funds allocated by state legislatures.
As the Department of Education’s new guidance opens the door for more U.S. institutions to use their remaining HEERF funds for OER this spring, below are some examples of successful COVID relief-funded projects already leveraging OER to meet student basic needs….”