Oklahoma State University is actively collaborating with faculty, students, and administrators to ensure all students have access to affordable and innovative learning opportunities through Open OKState, an Open Educational Resources (OER) program.
As of Fall 2022, all English 1113 and 1213 courses at Oklahoma State University are commercial textbook free. This means that no student in these courses has a textbook to purchase. Our textbooks include Who Teaches Writing (for English 1113), as well as the recently released Writing Spaces at Oklahoma State University (for English 1213). These textbooks have been produced through partnerships between First-Year Composition, OpenOkState, The Edmon Low Library, and the University Writing Center. This program creates free classroom materials to facilitate open,
customizable access to meaningful teaching, learning, and research resources and experiences. The First-Year Composition program here at Oklahoma State University is proud to offer composition sections that utilize OER textbooks and materials. Who Teaches Writing, utilized by English 1113, is a collection authored by contributors from Oklahoma State University, and from faculty and staff at institutions both inside and outside of Oklahoma. Contributors include faculty from various departments, contingent faculty and staff, and graduate instructors. One purpose of the resource is to provide short, relatively jargon-free chapters geared toward students taking First-Year Composition. Support for this project was provided in part by OpenOKState and Oklahoma State University Libraries. English 1213 OER sections also utilize a collection of texts pulled from contemporary composition and rhetoric journals, books, and conversations, and also includes scholarship written by instructors from OKState.
The OER initiatives at OKState align with our goals for first-year writing—to foster a space in which students have access to sources that insist upon collaboration and offer insight into bringing community oriented rhetorical engagement into classroom spaces. We are so grateful to the faculty, staff, and writers here at OKState who have made these incredible texts available! A specific thank you goes to Dr. Kathy Essmiller and Dr. Joshua Daniel, who made these writing projects possible. Visit Open OKState to explore all of the OER resources utilized in first-year writing courses!