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Open Books, Open Doors: A First-Gen Student's Experience with AOER Empowerment by Ethan Roth, UNC Psychology Undergraduate

11/28/2023
Unknown Author

Not to oversell it, but I grew up poor. The kind of poor where all your dishes are old Cool Whip containers and where you decide that some nights it’s better for everyone if you just go to sleep hungry. When I decided to go to college as a first-generation student, I knew it would be a risk. Given my background, there wasn’t going to be a safety net for me to fall back on if things went wrong. But even if I had to do it on my own, I knew that college was the only opportunity I had if I wanted to change my situation -- and so for me, it was a risk I had to take. 

 

Knowing it was something that I had to do didn’t make the first few semesters any easier though. College, as it turns out, is expensive. Being a low-income student meant that while I had my tuition covered by financial aid, all the other expenses that came with college looked like mountains. From asking professors to see if I could complete an assignment on paper because I couldn’t afford a laptop, to having to walk to class because I couldn’t afford a parking pass – each fee risked the possibility of pushing me into the negative and out of school. A few days before my first classes I went to hunt down the required textbooks and quickly realized that even rentals, the lowest cost option, were well outside of my budget. So I didn’t buy them.  

 

Taking classes without the required materials is a lot like starting a course half-way through the semester; it feels like every assignment and lecture is in the middle of a topic that you’ve never even heard about before. Tests are based on topics only covered in the readings, assignments are on certain chapters, exams are open book (but only if you have a book to open). To sum up the overall experience: it stinks. For a long time, it felt like I was getting half the education that I’d paid for simply because I wasn’t able to afford the materials for those classes. To be honest, it was crushing. 

 

It's this experience, however, that made me so excited about affordable and open educational resources (AOER). I first heard about AOER during my first semester at UNC. Searching for a job, my advisor recommended I apply for the ‘UNC Libraries AOER student position’ – to which I promptly asked, “What in the world is an AOER?” As it turns out, AOER are the solution to the very problem that had nearly driven me out of college: course materials that were things other than traditional textbooks, like library resources or online content, or openly licensed materials made available to students for free. Once I knew what AOER were, I knew that I had to get in, and less than a month later I would be starting my first day on the job. 

 

As UNC’s AOER student employee I work with UNC’s AOER committee to advertise, facilitate, and advocate for AOER on campus. This means that I get to bring a student voice to the conversation. While the decision to use AOER lies entirely in the hands of faculty, I get to be an advocate for those who would benefit the most from these materials and help spread the word so that students can take courses that best fit their budget. It would be an understatement to say that doing this work has returned my agency in what has felt like a hopeless situation.  

 

I would love to say that AOER have suddenly fixed the entire affordability crisis that higher education is going through, but that's not true. What I can say, however, is that the AOER movement offers an opportunity to make college better. It is an opportunity to better facilitate and share knowledge, an opportunity to get students more involved in the learning process, an opportunity to better facilitate diversity into college classrooms, and an opportunity to allow students like me to get an education – and maybe even change their lives. 

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OER as a Moral Imperative in a Time of Constraint and Censorship by Caterina Belle Azzarello, PhD Candidate, Educational Psychology
09/29/2025
profile-icon Nancy A. Henke
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Caterina Belle Azzarello headshot

Let me start with a simple but powerful idea: Open Educational Resources (OER) aren’t just useful or innovative—they’re a moral imperative. A moral imperative is when something feels so right or important that you have to do it, even if no one is making you. We’re living in a time of undeniable challenge in higher education. Across the country, universities and colleges are cutting budgets, laying off personnel, increasing costs for students and increasing workloads for staff and faculty. Programs and clubs that once served as lifelines for first-generation and marginalized students are disappearing.

Higher Education in Crisis

It’s not just about budgets. Academic freedom is being dismantled piece by piece. In Florida and Texas, for instance, new laws restrict teaching African American studies, gender theory, and even basic discussions of race and identity. Entire histories and scientific realities, like climate change or reproductive health, are being stripped from classrooms. Not because they’re inaccurate, but because they’re politically disruptive. Some of this happens quietly, through defunding. Some of this is loud, deliberate, and aggressive. Either way, if we don’t name it, challenge it, and offer alternatives, the effects will last long after today’s students have graduated.

Meanwhile, textbook costs remain a crushing barrier. Students skip meals, work multiple jobs, or go without required materials altogether. For some, the choice is literally between groceries and learning. A few years ago, one UNC student shared this: “I know students who failed because they couldn’t afford the textbook...it has caused me to stress greatly, and I had to choose between getting food or getting the textbook.” We’ve often heard that with great challenges come great opportunities, and that’s where OER enter the conversation, not as a trend, but as a lifeline. Sure, OER help reduce costs. But they’re so much more than that.

OER as a Lifeline, Not a Trend

OER restore agency to educators. They remove barriers for learners. They give teachers the freedom to choose resources that are pedagogically sound, factually accurate, and ethically right—not just what a publisher sells or what an administration approves of.

As someone who works in education research, I’ve seen how much trust matters: trust between students and teachers, trust in the materials we use, trust in the systems that are supposed to uphold knowledge, not suppress it.

When a teacher can’t afford to assign a textbook or is told they can’t use a resource because it clashes with a political narrative, or even when a student doesn’t see themselves reflected in their curriculum, that’s not just unfortunate. That’s unjust.

OER give us a way forward. They let educators adapt content to their classrooms and their communities. They allow us to include marginalized voices and tell the full story. And they guarantee that students—no matter their zip code, background, skin color, or bank account—can access the tools they need to succeed. That’s why universities have a moral obligation to support OER. Not as an afterthought, but as core infrastructure. 

That means investing in faculty training, incentivizing OER creation and adoption, and weaving open practices into policy. That’s why I’m proud to be a member of the AOER Committee at the University of Northern Colorado and deeply grateful for the support of the state of Colorado and the Colorado Department of Higher Education, whose grant funding makes so much of this work possible at UNC and around the state.

It also means defending academic freedom, especially now. Because when facts are politicized and evidence is treated as optional, open education becomes one of our strongest defenses. By making knowledge accessible, transparent, and verifiable, we uphold the integrity of scholarship and empower both educators and students to think critically, challenge misinformation, and protect the pursuit of truth. 

A Commitment to Truth, Equity, and Access

At the end of the day, we’re not just educators. We’re stewards of truth, equity, and possibility. OER are more than resources — they’re a moral commitment. A commitment to: openness over obscurity. Inclusion over exclusion. Facts over fear.

And in times like these, the commitment to OER and affordability is not only important, but also a moral responsibility we carry as educators and learners. Choosing openness and access is our resistance to barriers that limit opportunity, and it is our path forward toward a more just and inclusive future.

Education, Psychological Sciences, Open Initiatives & Resources
From Student Activist to OER Advocate: The Journey of a Textbook Affordability Librarian by Nancy Henke, UNC Assistant Professor
10/19/2023
profile-icon Nancy A. Henke
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As an undergraduate, long before I knew about affordable and open educational resources (AOER), I gave a speech at a well-attended university event where I decried the high cost of textbooks. After my speech, a fellow student asked me, shocked, “Are you allowed to talk about that?”

Spoiler: I’m still talking about it.

I didn’t know then that my career path would lead me into the higher education classroom as an instructor of Composition and Literature, through my degree in Library and Information Science, and right back around to issues of educational access and knowledge equity.

As UNC’s Textbook Affordability Librarian, I develop, sustain, and advocate for initiatives that promote free-to-student educational resources. This may mean working with faculty to adopt, adapt, or create OER for their courses, or exploring options for integrating library-licensed materials into a course, such as e-books available through library subscription databases.

My 13 years teaching at another university prior to my role at UNC has certainly influenced my views on AOER. On the one hand, I have extensive experience developing courses – from choosing textbooks to developing lessons and assessments to crafting quizzes and building Canvas courses – and I recognize the immense workload that comes with that endeavor. Converting a course from using a traditional, all-rights-reserved textbook to affordable and open resources is no mean feat; I deeply sympathize with faculty members’ legitimate concerns about the labor involved in doing so. I similarly respect the principles of academic freedom and the right of faculty to choose learning resources they deem best for their students and courses.

On the other hand, though, from the vantage point of a classroom-instructor-turned-AOER-advocate, I now see aspects of my previous relationship with the textbook industry very differently than I did while I was teaching. Especially in light of my impassioned speech about textbook costs as an undergraduate, I’ll admit that the cost of my students’ course materials wasn’t top of mind when I was an instructor.

Consider the opacity of textbook costs for faculty. It is possible for a faculty member to choose a textbook for a course and not even know exactly what students will pay for it. Some publishers make a faculty member “dig” to determine how much students will pay for the title, and in retrospect I’m ashamed to think that I often required a textbook without knowing the out-of-pocket cost for my students. After all, as an instructor I received a free copy of any textbook I was considering adopting for my courses, since publishers want to make it easy for faculty to review (and ideally, adopt) a textbook they sell. Of course, I knew it wouldn’t be free for my students, but the fact that my copy of the book simply materialized when I requested it from a publisher led to me focus only on the content of the book, not its cost.

Case in point: I taught early American literature for many years, and each semester I assigned a high-quality yet high-cost anthology from a major publisher. Even though I purposefully chose an older edition of the book to cut student costs, I now know that students easily paid over $70 for a new copy of the previous edition and over $50 for a used copy. And, to make it even worse, this is for literature that is so old that it’s in the public domain, meaning it’s no longer protected by copyright. At least 90% of the works I taught in that course are available for free anywhere on the web simply because of their age. Yes, there was plenty of “value-added” in this text: essential historical context, helpful timelines, thoughtful introductions written by experts in the field, etc. Yet that kind of content is also available in OER texts for free.

In the end, I’m a realist and recognize that not every learning resource in every class in every discipline will ever be completely open, and that’s fine. Yet as former teaching faculty now immersed in the world of open education, I hope to reach those instructors who, like me in my previous career, aren’t aware of OER or have misconceptions about them. We all know that the costs of higher education have soared, but what students pay for tuition and fees is simply outside the control of faculty. The cost of course materials, however, is within their control, and when a student doesn’t pay $70 for their American literature anthology, they have $70 for groceries, or gas, or a new pair of winter boots, or a thousand other things they need for themselves and their family.

There’s nothing I can do now about my having required expensive textbooks in the past other than fail forward. My position at UNC Libraries gives me the opportunity to make amends by advancing programs that help current and future UNC students save on textbooks. My undergraduate self who gave that speech way back when might have been disappointed that Instructor Nancy didn’t do more to control textbook costs for her students, but she’d certainly be on board with Librarian Nancy who works on behalf of AOER.  

Educational Technology, Higher Education, Library & Information Science, Open Initiatives & Resources
Open Educational Resources – A Graduate Student Perspective by Teresa Henderson, UNC Professional Counseling Graduate Student
01/26/2021
Unknown Author
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As a master’s student in professional counseling, I would estimate I spent nearly $500 on textbooks  during my first year in the program, with the book content ranging from the basic introduction to the counseling profession, to diagnostic manuals and treatment planning resources. While I am excited to be pursuing my dreams, especially as a first-generation student, the cost of higher education has become an increasingly salient issue for me as I have progressed through my education. I often find myself wondering, when all is said and done and I walk across the stage as Dr. Henderson someday, how much will I have spent on my education, on tuition and books, from my bachelor’s degree to my doctorate? I know I am not alone in wondering this and feel that it has become a question that many students find themselves asking. The cost of education, and the materials that go along with our education, have become a substantial barrier for many to academic success. Some may argue that if students cannot afford the textbooks for classes, they can use their university library’s resources, but with limited resources that are often utilized by more than one student, many are left scrambling to access course materials that often determine their success in the course. While student success is a multi-faceted issue, I feel that we set many of our students up for failure by requiring expensive textbooks for courses, especially courses that are required to complete a degree. How can we address this textbook issue so that students have financially friendly options for class materials as they work toward their goals?

            I first learned of open educational resources (OER) during my first semester of graduate school. In search of a job, I had applied for a position with UNC’s University Libraries as an OER graduate student employee. I remember reading through the job description and thinking to myself, “This position sounds great, and I think I’m qualified, but I have no idea what OER is!” Luckily, I landed the position, and had the opportunity to steadily learn all about OER for the next few months. The benefits of using OER in classrooms quickly became clear, and I realized that increasing the use of OER materials could help to alleviate some of the financial burden for students in higher education. However, I found myself wondering why I had not heard of OER before, and why professors were not using these resources in place of expensive textbooks more often. If we have the tools to make higher education more accessible and affordable, why aren’t we using them? I wonder if part of the issue stems from common misconceptions of OER, with one of the biggest misconceptions about OER materials being that because they are free, they must be of lower quality. While I am sure that OER materials exist out there which certainly are of lower quality, the materials I have come across and worked with during my time with University Libraries have been of overwhelmingly high quality. Many sites which offer collections of OER also offer rating systems for individual materials and provide users an opportunity to leave honest reviews and even suggestions for changing the material. In fact, one of the coolest aspects of OER is how customizable the content often is; using OER offers professors the opportunity to edit materials to better fit the focus of the course and its unique learning outcomes. While integrating OER into a course can be a learning curve, plenty of resources exist to make the process easier. To the professors considering OER, I encourage you to learn more and give it a chance; in making the jump to using OER, we provide our students with customized, high-quality, and affordable materials that contribute to their learning and overall success in higher education.

Educational Technology