Introduction

The high cost of educational resources and textbooks create a serious obstacle to the accessibility and affordability of a post-secondary education. Traditional educational resources also present barriers to innovation in pedagogy and curriculum design. Fortunately, Open Educational Resources (OER) are a viable solution to both these problems, since they can be accessed for free online or printed at a fraction of the cost of a traditional textbook. They can also be edited to better fit the curricular or pedagogical goals of an instructor.

Student support and advocacy for OER is important to:

• ensure that OER gain or continue to build momentum on campuses,
• bring together community members, and
• push for the adoption and creation of resources.

This toolkit provides information on how interested student societies/associations as well as individual students can successfully advocate for greater OER adoption on campus. Primarily designed to serve post-secondary students in Canada working to support open education, we hope this toolkit will be useful to students from any country.

Greater OER adoption results in:

• an increase in the amount of student dollars saved,
• pedagogical benefits in the classroom, and
• benefits to society more broadly.

This toolkit explains the benefits of OER and provides guidance on how students can help promote OER adoption.