Plaintext
OER Designation Guide
This guide is adapted from ‘Material Costs in the Schedule FAQ’, created by the PCC OER
Steering Committee under a CC BY license.
Program Fee Code 71 designates:
1. Course sections that have adopted any Open Educational Resource as a required text
Included are any required textbooks and other text-based materials, workbooks, lab manuals,
etc. that are either in the public domain or have a Creative Commons (CC) license (i.e., an
intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others).
*For a breakdown of the different types of CC licenses, visit the Creative Commons website.
Excluded from this designation are any non-required supplemental materials, or required non-
textbook materials (art supplies, scrubs, etc.), or any text-based materials that are copyrighted
and thus not free to use, share, or re-purpose.
Frequently Asked Questions:
If the Open Educational Resource is not the primary resource/textbook, then should this
course still have the OER flag?
Yes. All required text-based materials are included, so if at least one of these required
resources is open (in public domain or has a Creative Commons license) then the course can be
designated as an ‘OER course’ with the fee code 71 flag.
Is a textbook subscription service that a student can purchase considered OER?
No, any subscription method is not OER since the resource is no longer free to use and licensed
in a way that the student has the rights to download this resource and keep it indefinitely and
share the resource with others.
What if I don’t require any texts or text-based materials for my class?
If your course does not have any required texts or text-based materials then this course will not
be designated as an ‘OER course’.
WTCS OER Network
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Does it matter what kind of previous resources the class required in terms of designating the
course as an OER course? E.g., if the course didn’t require any resources in the past and now
requires an OER text, does this count as an OER-labeled course?
Previous text requirements for the course do not influence the OER course labeling. This OER
designation only tracks current required texts for courses that are OER.
What if I am unsure about whether my texts are Open Educational Resources?
Please first visit Lumen Learning’s ‘Defining OER’ webpage for more information. If needed,
then please consult your college librarians and bookstore staff for further assistance.
When is this happening?
This Client Program Fee Code will be available now and colleges can start reporting this
information for the Client Reporting FY20 deadline and onward.
What should I be doing?
Faculty: Determine whether any of your required texts are Open Educational Resources (OER).
If questions arise, please consult with your college’s librarians. Provide OER information to your
Client Reporting Manager in the process that your department chair & deans and client
managers help develop.
Department Chairs & Deans: Work with your faculty and client reporting managers to develop
processes to collect this information from faculty each term. Designate roles and
responsibilities in this information collection process. Suggestions include using a Google form
or spreadsheet to allow faculty to input their own information to reduce the workload for all
involved.
Librarians: Help support faculty in correctly identifying Open Educational Resources for
required texts.
Client Reporting Managers: Work with your faculty and department chairs & deans to develop
processes to collect this information from faculty each term. Report the 71 Program fee code to
the system office. This code will be mandatory for nursing courses that adopt the WTCS-
developed OER nursing textbooks (Pharmacology, Fundamentals, Skills, Mental Health, and
Management) to help supply the reporting information for this federal grant (OpenRN).
WTCS OER Network
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.