Getting Started

I admit, when I first started thinking about trying to teach without textbooks for American Lit I, I kept hearing the voice of Doc Brown from "Back to the Future" saying, "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need . . . roads." Only, in this case, it was "books." Where we're going, we don't need books.

I had heard discussions about OER at Sandburg for months, and I was intrigued. Though the idea seemed daunting at first, I had made changes last year to the structure of my Comp II class that helped me see the possibilities. When I learned I would be teaching an online section of American Literature I this summer, the time seemed right to jump in and commit to going OER.

Step 1: Creating the Syllabus
I knew I would end up spending a lot of time searching for materials. My first step, then, would be to determine which essays, short stories, and poems I wanted to include on the syllabus in the first place.

The summer semester moves fast, so I wanted to have all of the materials ready to go on the first day. I spent several days building my reading list for the class. In the end, I settled on 52 readings (By the end of the semester, I would add two more, for a grand total of 54). The next step would be finding them.

Step 2: Finding an Online Textbook 
This step—by far the most time-consuming in my OER journey—should be subtitled "Whereupon I Give Thanks for the Goodness and Talents of the Sandburg Librarians and the FTLC Staff."

In the past, I had always used the Norton Anthology of American Literature when teaching American Lit. A preliminary conversation with Librarian Jennie Archer earlier that spring, however, had let me know that the Norton Anthologies were not yet available online. Alas.

I met with Jennie after the spring semester ended, and she helped familiarize me with OER resources, including those provided by our very own FTLC. I had several conversations with Cindy and Gail about the resources as well. I hoped to find a single anthology that would contain the majority of the readings I wanted to use.

In the end, I found an American Literature I anthology available through College Open Textbooks.
http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/

Specifically, the book I would end up using was "American Literature Before 1860" by Rio Salado College. I had never of Rio Salado College, though, so I thought I should do a little investigating. Yes, what I mean here is that I fell down a Google-search-Internet-rabbit-hole for about 15 minutes. Turns out, Rio Salado is a two-year college in Tempe, Arizona, and it is part of the Maricopa Community College District.

This probably is not a great secret: we English major types tend to love our books. The Norton Anthology of American Literature (Volumes I and II) and I had spent many years together, first when I was a student, and then when I became an instructor. If I was going to abandon the classic Norton Anthology for an unknown, I wanted to get to know the up-and-comer a little better—or at least get a sense of the institution from which the text was produced. Here is a picture of Rio Salado:

The online Rio Salado textbook had 26 of the 52 readings I planned to assign. This meant that I still had 26 to go. Time to get some more coffee and settle in for a nice long stretch with my friend Google.