Textbook costs have risen 812% - 1,041% over the past three decades. Consequently, 65% of students in a national study did not purchase textbooks and 82% of students agreed that free online access to textbooks would help them do “significantly better” in their courses. Open Educational Resources (OER) offer a solution.
"Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions." -- The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
In other words, OER are open, free resources that you and your students can use, well, freely.
This material was created by David Wiley and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at http://opencontent.org/definition/.