Rick Arend has been using OER texts in his CCV business courses, including Small Business Management and Business Analysis and Decision Making, since 2015. He was prompted to search for OER while teaching a Personal Finance class. "The textbooks that I found were $125 or more. And I said, wait a minute. The purpose of this class is to teach students how to mange their personal finances. How can I ask them to pay $125 for a book for this?"

To find OER, Rick has turned to OER materials found through Saylor Academy, MIT OpenCourseWare and the MERLOT repository. Over the years, he's observed growth in both the quality and quantity of OER available in his discipline. He also draws on his experience as an entrepreneur to generate class discussion and activities. 

Faculty considering a switch to OER should prepare to "download them, take a hard look at them, to see if they really fit with the course. Just like selecting any other textbook," Arend says. But the time and the effort it takes to find open texts doesn't go unnoticed by students. 

"I’ve had a number of them tell me that’s why they selected my class over others, because they didn’t have to pay for any textbooks or materials."

Marie O'Brien, a member of CCV's business faculty, worked with her colleagues to eliminate textbook costs and implement OER in all sections of Introduction to Business. 

"From a student point of view, it’s really really beneficial," she says. "Most of these textbooks get downloaded to their computer. They're not waiting for the textbook to be mailed to them."

O'Brien admits making a class 100 percent OER comes with challenges. Many commercial textbooks come with supplemental content for the course, including business case studies and videos. Finding similar materials that are free or openly licensed can be time-consuming, though she notes that the content and material of the OER textbook differs little from its commercial counterpart. 

O'Brien also stresses the role OER plays in reducing the financial burden of higher education for students.

"You can’t just drop $150 textbook on these students," O'Brien says. "if we look at our students as our customers, we really have to put ourselves out there and do OER as much as we can."