Touro Libraries have teamed up with the provost’s office to offer the Touro University Open Educational Resources Faculty Fellowship. Faculty from a diverse cross section of departments and programs (both undergrad and post-grad) have completed the fellowship, developing unique OER for their courses. As the cornerstone of our OER program, the fellowship has been one of the main drivers of OER adoption at Touro. Since 2018, Touro faculty have saved their students close to $900,000 in textbook costs by teaching with OER!

SPARC, the non-profit OER advocacy group, summarizes the why behind using OER: “Textbook costs should not be a barrier to education. Students learn more when they have access to quality materials. Technology holds boundless potential to improve teaching and learning. And, better education means a better future.”

Read on for a second case study from one of our OER Faculty Fellows, as they describe their process for developing unique OER for their course. 

Creation and use of OER in preclinical medical education

Stephanie Klinesmith, MS Department of Anatomy, Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, Middletown

Traditionally, OER has been used to replace expensive textbooks and resources for courses, which can be arduous in medical school curricula; I had difficulty picturing how I could implement OER in my course until I identified an opportunity while reviewing the curriculum and updating the syllabus for the coming year. I struggled locating the vast number of clinical conditions students must learn scattered throughout the required resources. If I had trouble doing so, I knew my students did too. The American Association of Anatomy has published national learning objectives for the preclinical anatomical science courses, which contain a list of clinical conditions relevant to each topic. I decided to use this list of clinical conditions to create an OER using OER Commons.

OER Commons is a free-to-use site with an open author feature that facilitates the creation and publishing of an OER. The editor in OER Commons is relatively simple in editing capability but has functions to insert text, photos, videos, and external files and links. Although I did not use the video or external file capability, I inserted plenty of pictures, which OER provides formatting for source reference and alternative text for accessibility.

screenshot of Open Author tool used to create Klinesmith’s Clinical Reference for Neuroanatomy.

OER Commons makes publishing easy, with clear descriptions of licensing options. When published, the OER can be easily edited and updated. It can be accessed through the OER Commons site as a click-through module, meshes seamlessly with Canvas, and can be downloaded as a PDF, allowing flexibility in how students access the resource. Overall, I feel OER Commons provides a beginner-friendly option for the development and publication of an OER.

screenshot of Klinesmith’s Clinical Reference for Neuroanatomy on OER Commons.

Stephanie’s completed OER, Clinical Reference for Neuroanatomy is available on Touro Scholar for pdf download, and with links to the web version on OER Commons. Michelle’s Kinesiology OER is still in production and will be published on Touro Scholar on it’s completion. Check out the OER section of Touro Scholar for more OER made and used by Touro faculty!