What is PDXOpen?
PDXOpen is Portland State University Library’s grant-based open education initiative. This program provides faculty with the resources they need to redesign their courses using Open Educational Resources (OER), making higher education more affordable for students.
Through PDXOpen, PSU faculty can collaborate directly with the Library to adopt, adapt, or create OER tailored to their courses. The Library supports faculty in publishing high-quality open textbooks and OER that are free to both PSU students and anyone around the world.
Support Affordable Education for All!
By supporting PDXOpen, you can play a pivotal role in fostering educational equity and innovation—not just at PSU, but around the globe. Your contribution will enable us to expand our OER grant offerings, helping to save students money and lower the barriers to education. Join us today in making a meaningful difference in students’ lives and shaping the future of higher education by donating to our Open Textbook & Course Materials Fund!
Why Open Education?
Open education initiatives like PDXOpen align seamlessly with PSU’s Strategic Plan: Future in Focus, providing students with equitable access to high-quality education and meaningful pathways for social and economic mobility. By intentionally creating and integrating OER that reflect the rich diversity of our campus community, PSU can help address the complex challenges students face.
Not only does PDXOpen make higher education more affordable for students, but it also empowers faculty to tailor learning experiences that are relevant and responsive to their students’ lives. By considering students’ diverse backgrounds in course design, PSU faculty can better support all learners, enhancing their academic and professional success.
Goals of PDXOpen
PDXOpen aims to:
- Reduce educational costs for students by providing free or low-cost learning materials that are accessible on the first day of class
- Offer support services for faculty, including technical assistance and copyright guidance, to help them create open textbooks tailored to their students’ specific needs
- Empower instructors to adopt open pedagogical models that enhance student success and engagement
- Foster campus-wide partnerships to assist with project management, share expertise, and ensure faculty authors succeed in completing their textbooks
- Encourage innovation and experimentation among instructors in exploring new, effective, and affordable ways to deliver learning materials through OER
Impact
Since its launch in 2013, PDXOpen has made a remarkable impact, saving 6,664 PSU students over $1 million in course materials and textbook costs which has significantly reduced financial barriers to higher education. To date, the Library has supported the creation and publication of over 35 Open Educational Resources (OER) across a diverse range of disciplines, including Japanese, astronomy, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic, Korean, special education, geographic information systems (GIS), philosophy, chemistry, climate change, psychology, and mathematics.
According to responses from the PDXOpen Textbook Adoption Form, open textbooks created in the PDXOpen program have been adopted by over 70 different instructors at high schools, community colleges, four-year colleges, and universities.
This initiative has achieved impressive results: open educational materials and textbooks developed through PDXOpen have been downloaded over 900,000 times, reaching more than 11,000 institutions in 232 countries as of January 2025. This global reach underscores PDXOpen’s vital role in transforming the educational landscape and making education more affordable at PSU and beyond.
PDXOpen Feedback
“The funding and expert advice provided by PSU Library’s Open Textbook Initiative allowed me to develop a peer-edited textbook that reflects the latest curricular developments in my discipline without the excesses of traditional textbook publishing: excessive scope, size, and cost.”
– Dr. Robert Sanders, Associate Professor of Spanish, World Languages and Literatures, Author of Leyendas y arquetipos del Romanticismo español, Segunda edición (2017)
“Because this textbook is open-access, I was able to print it out and write all in it, highlight, and overall do what I need in it to help me learn and study. I learn best when I am able to write right in the pages, but with normal textbooks, I refrain from doing so because it was so expensive and I need to sell it back after the course. This lets me be less stressed about money, and about learning the way that works best for me. And now, I am able to keep this textbook after the class to go back to later if I want to.”
– PSU Student
“Decoding the 1920s: A Reader for Advanced Learners in Russian fit perfectly to our class structure. I was able to use multiple chapters in the classroom, and students loved working with authentic texts.”
– Instructor, University of Illinois at Chicago
PDXOpen Projects
Applying for PDXOpen
PDXOpen is not currently accepting proposals for grant-funded projects. Be sure to check your PSU email for updates on how to apply for the program and information about upcoming calls for proposals.
If you have any questions about PDXOpen, OER, and/or open textbooks, please contact Open Scholarship Librarian, Julia Stone, at julia.stone@pdx.edu.