News & Blog

UCF’s inaugural Open Ed Live event was held online earlier this year and brought together higher ed teaching faculty, librarians, and instructional designers to explore the boundless opportunities of open education. The event was hosted online by the Division of Digital Learning along with members of UCF Libraries, UCF Bookstore, and the UCF Office of the Provost and Academic Affairs. 

Recordings and files from Open Ed Live are now available in STARS, UCF’s institutional repository hosted by the UCF Libraries. 

The presentations illustrate how much open education has evolved in a relatively short time. Highlights from these sessions include thoughtful discussions on artificial intelligence, balancing open initiatives with inclusive access programs, and a panel of students who actively advocated for open educational resources (OER) at UCF. While textbook affordability remains one of the key appeals of OER, what is striking about these presentations is the progression of OER from the realm of affordability into open scholarship and pedagogy.   

John Venecek, UCF Humanities Librarian, shares his perspective:  

Some of the same campus units that organized the Open Ed Live event are available to help UCF faculty explore and adopt OER. To learn more about OER, see the library guide on OER. For faculty with questions or specific support needs, please submit a response to the OER Contact Form. 

Each year, UCF recognizes faculty across UCF who have made outstanding efforts to make their required course materials affordable. Provost Johnson presents the two AIM High Impact Awards, and the Knights’ Choice Award is presented by SGA. 

The 2024 AIM High Individual Award winner is Christian Beck, Associate Lecturer in the Department of English. Through collaborations with librarians and instructional designers, they created two open educational resources (OER). The first OER is Introduction to Medieval Literature for ENL 2012. The second OER is Introduction to World Literature for LIT 2110. Together, using these OERs instead of traditional textbooks have saved students approximately $90,000 since 2017. Our librarians Sarah Norris, Lily Dubach, and John Venecek supported Christian’s project, in collaboration with instructional designers Aimee deNoyelles and John Raible. 

As Christian Beck and other award winners shared insights during the panel at the AIM High event, he was asked what advice he would give to other professors looking to use more affordable course materials. Christian responded, “Talk to your librarians!” 

The 2024 AIM High Impact Group Award winner is the Biology Department. For their high enrollment BSC2010 and BSC2011 courses, they adopted the Biology 2e OER from OpenStax, making these gateway courses have zero textbook costs for students. Formerly, these courses assigned textbooks that were approximately $300. The group acknowledged instructional designer Jim Paradiso for his support through their project. 

The 2024 Knights Choice Award winner is Dr. Robert Borgon, Associate Professor in the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences. He has adopted library-sourced materials and First Day discount textbooks for his BCH 4024 and BSC 3403 courses. Luci Blanco, SGA Director of Academic Progress, represented students on the panel and shared, “It goes to show that students recognize the work that goes into this.” 

Contact Us 

For faculty interested in exploring affordable course materials, please reach out to our textbook affordability librarian, Lily Dubach, or your subject librarian to get started. You can also have us check if your textbook is available as a library eBook by using the eTextbook Check/Request Form. 

Welcome to the second installment of Diamond’s Hidden Gems, a blog series in which I introduce you to the University of Central Florida’s library services that you may not have known about!

The cost of textbooks and course materials is a significant but often overlooked barrier to affording a degree. Being able to afford your textbook could be the difference between dropping a course and taking as many as possible. UCF’s Textbook Affordability Initiative is designed to minimize the cost of course materials for students while maintaining quality and respecting academic freedom.

There’s just one problem: few of us even know this program exists. Below, I give you everything you need to know to find out what free textbooks are available to you!

Continuing on our streak of making college materials cheaper and easier to access, the textbook affordability initiative helps students gain access to both hard-copy materials and eTextbooks. Using this program, you can often save yourself the effort of hunting down high-priced materials.

Simply fill out known information in the eTextbook portal or a one-page request, and you’ve increased your chances of gaining free and legal access to your course’s required material.

I had the opportunity to speak to Lily Dubach, UCF’s Textbook Affordability Librarian, and she shared with me a few pointers that make selecting classes to enroll in much easier. You can use this method to identify whether your course has a costly required material before you’ve even enrolled!

If you’d like to know how to do this, and check out my step-by-step guide that shows you exactly how to locate or request the materials you need!

Did you know that the library and instructional designers work with faculty to find free course materials? Choice invited the Textbook Affordability Librarian, Lily Dubach, and Sr. Instructional Designer, Dr. John Raible, to speak about a couple examples at UCF. They highlighted an open educational resource (OER) project and library-sourced eBooks, two options that faculty can choose instead of traditional textbooks. Both OER and library-sourced eBooks are free to students. Faculty interested in these options should contact their subject librarian or the Textbook Affordability Librarian to discuss possibilities.

The webinar was held on July 20, 2022. Watch it below or read the accompanying case study.

UCF InfoSec, along with UCF Libraries and UCF IT, would like to remind students of the dangers of downloading pirated software, textbooks, or other materials.  Recently, a European research institute lost a week’s worth of COVID-19 research data after a university student inadvertently infected their systems with ransomware while trying to download pirated software. To learn more about the ransomware attack, please see the link below.

Pirated textbooks or software can be appealing to those looking to save money, but it’s important to remember that such resources could be laced with malware.  To help students find affordable alternatives to pirated textbooks and software, we asked UCF Libraries and UCF IT to share resources that are available to UCF students.

1. UCF Libraries resources

UCF Libraries, through their Textbook Affordability program, works with campus partners and faculty to minimize the cost of course materials for students.  Since 2016, UCF faculty have taught over 950 classes using open or library-sourced materials, in turn reaching over 65,000 students and potentially saving them just over $6,761,705.

The UCF Libraries website contains tips for students to save money on textbooks.  For more information, and to see if the library has your course text as a free electronic book, review the Students tab at:  guides.ucf.edu/textbook-affordability/students .

Please note that, due to licensing requirements, only current students, staff, and faculty can access the free electronic books and resources through the UCF Libraries. Do not share the downloaded files; instead, share links to the catalog or databases for individuals to access the materials directly.

Sharing resources licensed by UCF can put the university at risk. Distribution of licensed materials accessed with UCF credentials could provide grounds for a breach of contract claim against UCF, which creates a legal liability for our university and potential loss of access to those resources. Similarly, participation in this type of distribution may result in legal and/or disciplinary consequences to the individual sharing content in this way. For more information, please see UCF Policies 2-103 and 4-002:  policies.ucf.edu.

2. UCF IT Resources

UCF students have access to the Microsoft 365 suite of apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Publisher, through their Knights email.  To learn how to access this free resource, please visit UCF IT Knowledge Base –Installing Office 365 on a Personal PC .

UCF Apps is a software streaming service like a virtual computer lab.  Students can access many software titles they need for their studies including ArcGIS, SPSS, LISREL, NVivo, SAS, and more!  UCF Apps is found here:  apps.ucf.edu/ucf-apps/

UCF Public Computing labs, found in various locations across campus, provide additional software resources like Adobe Creative Cloud for design work and a wide variety of other software titles.  Information about public computer lab locations and availability can be found here:  it.ucf.edu/techcommons/computer-labs/tech-commons-ii-lab/

Remember to only download software and digital textbooks from reputable sources.  Avoid pirated content to reduce the risk of malware infecting your system and make sure your devices are up to date.  Taking these steps to keep your system secure will help protect you, UCF, and your fellow Knights.

Learn more about the ransomware attack:  https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2021/05/06/mtr-in-real-time-pirates-pave-way-for-ryuk-ransomware/

UCF InfoSec wishes all students a safe, secure summer.  We are here to help with any information security concerns you may have.  Forward suspicious emails to the Security Incident Response Team at SIRT@ucf.edu and contact InfoSec at infosec@ucf.edu if you have any questions.