University Library

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Abstract: This open textbook guide is being utilized in public health and nutrition, food and dietetics departments for faculty and undergraduate students by Alicia Zuniga at California State University, Sacramento. The guide provides course-specific OER options for high-enrollment, general education courses in these subject areas. The main motivation to create this resource was to support faculty who want to use OER and to help save students money.

Public Health and Nutrition - NUFD 113 and PUBH 134
Brief Description of course highlights:  Looked at lower level, high-enrollment courses in my assigned subject areas of Health Sciences, Public Health, Nutrition, Food & Dietetics, and Physical Therapy, and I focused on two of these courses that required textbooks: NUFD 113 and PUBH 134. 

Student population: Undergraduate students who are taking one of the high-enrollment general education courses in Public Health or Nutrition, Food and Dietetics.

Textbook or OER/Low cost Title: 

Brief Description:  I created an OER guide (as a textbook replacement) for faculty in the Public Health and Nutrition, Food and Dietetics.  I looked at lower level, high-enrollment courses in my assigned subject areas of Health Sciences, Public Health, Nutrition, Food & Dietetics, and Physical Therapy, and I focused on two of these courses that required textbooks: NUFD 113 and PUBH 134. I created an online OER guide that contains options for textbook replacement that overlap with topics covered in each of these classes, as well as additional OER resources if faculty would like to explore them more. 

Please provide a link to the resource  https://csus.libguides.com/oer

Student access:  The guide is freely accessible for anyone via the LibGuides platform. The OER resources included in the guide are openly licensed and were found using OER repositories like OpenStax, OER Commons, MERLOT, COOL4ed and LibreTexts.

Supplemental resources: The guide also provides an overview for the benefits of OER, a list of OER repositories to search further, and links to OER created by the University Library.

Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook.  Considering textbook prices/rental fees and Fall 2023 enrollment numbers, replacing textbooks with OER for two of the listed courses in the guide would, at minimum, save students $21,795.48 per semester.

License: Everything in the guide is openly licensed.

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost option. . I was motivated to create this guide to save students money, but also to help support faculty in my subject areas if they aren’t sure where to start with OER. The guide is a living resource that will be updated and expanded as new resources become available and as I have time to add specific resources for additional courses.

How did you find and select the open textbook for this course? I used strategies that I learned from participating in Sac State’s OER and AL$ Faculty Learning Community to search OER repositories and align them with course descriptions in the subject areas I support.

Sharing Best Practices: It's not an all or nothing process--you can slowly shift your course to low cost and then zero cost over several semesters. The important thing is that you are actively working to reduce financial strain on students. Reach out to your subject librarian for help looking for suitable, high-quality materials to replace current course materials.
Describe any key challenges you experienced, how they were resolved  and lessons learned. In general, getting buy-in from faculty is the biggest challenge, as well as outreach and education for what exactly OER is and how it can benefit their students.

Instructor Name:  Alicia Zuniga
Please I am a Sr. Assistant Librarian at California State University, Sacramento. 

I support faculty, students and staff in the Health Sciences, Public Health, and Physical Therapy departments and the Nutrition, Food, and Dietetics Program.

Please provide a link to your university page.
https://scholars.csus.edu/esploro/profile/alicia_zuniga/overview?institution=01CALS_USL

Please describe the courses you teach.
Information literacy one-shot instruction sessions as a guest lecturer in semester-long courses.
Describe your teaching philosophy and any research interests related to your discipline or teaching.  I am interested in Open Access, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility initiatives, and scholarly publishing.