How Do I Provide Materials to Online Learners?

When designing a course, selecting instructional materials often requires significant time and effort. To aid in the process of selecting and creating learning materials, this article focuses on the following topics:

Providing digital textbooks and publisher materials
Finding Open Educational Resources (OER)
Considering copyright, accessibility, and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles

Digital Textbooks and Publisher Materials

When selecting materials, you’ll want to consider the cost, accessibility, and support available to both you and your students. There may be multiple fees depending on where students purchase their textbooks. Be aware that publisher content/sites/applications are not supported by our Help Desk. Regardless of the digital textbook being used, be sure to confirm and include the following details in your course for your students:

Minimum technology requirements
Available supplemental materials
Access steps for student and instructor
Link to accessibility statement
Link to support contacts

Textbook Resources

Canvas Third-Party Tools Directory - See which tools are integrated and supported by Boise State
Boise State Bronco Shop - Textbook resources for students and faculty

Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources (OER) are materials created and shared under an open license. This enables educators to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute materials, under certain parameters, freely (Wiley). As such, OER offers major potential for lowering the cost of attending college. OER includes textbooks, lessons, videos, readings, activities, test banks, and any supplemental material.

Boise State’s OER website is a great place to learn more. Here is a quick summary of the tools and resources that you will find:

Copyright and Fair Use

Regardless of the instructional materials that are chosen for a given course, the responsibility lies with faculty to verify the licensing status and attribution information before reusing content. Here are a few key resources to reference when choosing to use other people’s works:

Boise State Campus Guide to Copyright Compliance
Albertsons Library Copyright and Fair Use
Albertsons Library Liaisons
Boise State Fair Use Checklist
How to Apply a Creative Commons License to Your Work - Resource from Queen’s University

How and Where to Find Materials

Creative Commons Search - Find openly licensed and public domain works
Find Free-to-Use Images - Google Guide
Finding Still Images Online - Albertsons Library Resources
Unsplash - Free, high-resolution photos
Wikimedia Commons - Public domain and freely-licensed educational media content
YouTube Audio Library - Find free music for multimedia projects

Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning

Accessibility and universal design for learning (UDL) principles are important design considerations to keep your course compliant and improve usability for all students. At Boise State, we describe UDL as “an approach to design that originates from the belief that the broad range of human ability is ordinary, not special. Universal design accommodates people with disabilities, older people, children, and others who are atypical, and it accommodates them in a way that is not stigmatizing and benefits all users.” BSU has several web pages and articles related to applying UDL principles when creating and finding accessible content.

CTL: Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning - A multitude of resources from the Center for Teaching and Learning at Boise State.
Accessibility in Online Courses - from eCampus Center
Teaching and Learning Knowledge Base - Several technical articles on Accessibility