Anonymous [Champion of Open – Physics]

Department of Physics

Describe your open educational resources and/or practices:

I use mostly the OpenStax physics and astronomy textbooks. I publish them in pressbooks.online.ucf.edu. The exception is my PSC1121 textbook, which I wrote and copyrighted; it is also on our Pressbooks platform.

Describe the impact open educational resources and/or practices has had on your teaching and/or students’ learning: 

I have not measured an impact relative to past semesters when I used conventional publishers’ textbooks. Perhaps it is possible to measure it, but I am not sure how to do it.

What is one piece of advice for other faculty interested in OER/P?

Books are books, some expensive, some free, but it is the instructor’s teaching and especially the student’s learning which makes the textbook valuable. I rejoice to have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars for my students to spend on something other than an overpriced textbook.

Related Resources 

• PSC1121: https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/psc1121/
• AST2002: https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/ast2002tjb/
• PHY2048C: https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/phy2048tjb/ 
• PHY2053C/2054C: https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/phy2053tjb/