In the U.S., it's possible to go off to college, walk into your first class, and be told one of two things: that your required text is a very expensive commercial textbook product, available in the campus bookstore/online... OR that the required text is a free, online resource that you can go and read starting on day one. And then: "By the way; instead of a final, you'll be working in groups to ADD NEW CHAPTERS to the textbook, which next semester's students will be using to learn."

How did such a vastly different textbook, and even classroom experience, come to be possible? If you're new to Open Educational Resources, you may be asking: where did they come from, and why are some professors who use OER also doing instruction where they have the students create future course content?

Come find out where the idea for Open Educational Resources came from, how they became reality thanks to a new set of legal tools related to copyright ownership...and how their existence and use stands in stark contrast to the profit-driven capitalism of our legacy commercial textbook publishers.