If you're not a fan of video, it can be easy to fall back on printed resources such as textbooks and lecture notes when you start to design an online class. However, students need you to further explain and expand on the printed material to help them understand difficult concepts and focus their study. They also need you to share your expertise on the subject - the excitement that you bring to your area of teaching. While text materials are important, having a good mix of media can help make your online course more engaging.

Textbooks

Depending on your course context a textbook or readings may be one of the main ways that you share content. It is important that your course text is available and accessible to students. Keep in mind the following considerations when selecting a course textbook:

Accessible online. Make sure that your course textbook is available online as an ebook, the UBC Bookstore can help determine its availability. If your text is not available online, students may experience delays in receiving the text or not be able to receive it at all.
Integrated. When teaching in-person we often spend time discussing the course text with our learners and highlighting the key sections to pay attention to. In an online course, you will need to determine how you will integrate the textbook within the online course. Help students understand the value of the text by referencing it in your online lecture, discussion and other interactions with students.

Open textbooks

Affordability and access to paid course materials, such as textbooks, can represent a barrier to learning for students. According to the 2019 AMS Academic Experience Survey (AES) [pdf], over 70% of UBC-Vancouver campus (UBCV) undergraduate students have gone without textbooks or resources due to cost at least once, with 35 percent of students reporting they frequently or often go without textbooks due to costs. The same survey found that UBCV undergraduates spent an average of $829 on textbooks or course resources in 2019. The transition to online courses represents an opportunity to increase access to learning materials through the use wasof open textbooks. Open textbooks are referred to as Open Educational Resources (OER) that are available for free in a variety of digital formats, including downloadable, offline formats that are good for low-bandwidth contexts. Additionally, they are openly licensed, enabling instructors to edit and modify them in order to provide meaningful materials that fit their courses. Many instructors at UBC use open textbooks. In the academic year 2019/2020, an estimated 18,440 students enrolled in courses using open resources in place of paid textbooks or readings. Please see the 2020 Open UBC Snapshot for more information about open textbook use at UBC.

There are many repositories for open textbooks. To find quality open textbooks in your discipline, please check the UBC Library guide for open textbooks.

Providing course reserves and readings to students

The UBC Library Online Course Reserves (LOCR) can help you with course readings – linking to subscription resources, finding ebooks where available, and more. It also allows the Library to handle copyright concerns related to the readings.

Through LOCR, you can:

Easily add articles, books, weblinks and media resources to Canvas or request the Library to add items via their Syllabus Service.
Request the Library create PDFs of book chapters.
Create a hyperlink for the course materials accessible to students enrolled in your course.
Quickly reactivate readings in future courses.

You can search UBC Library’s catalogue which has a large collection of journals and many ebooks that can support online learning. If the material you’re looking for does not support online learning, consider placing a LOCR request and the Permissions Unit will attempt to secure a transactional license for your use. Your Vancouver or Okanagan Subject Librarian can also help.

More information about copyright is available later in this module.

Information in this section adapted from Indiana University's Teaching Online, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; from UBC Copyright Office; the University of Minnesota Libraries, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional content provided, with permission, by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, licensed CC-BY-SA.