Texas OER & Related Legislation
Across the country, at least 30 states have legislation and policy in support of OER. This number continues to grow. SPARC has an excellent online tool for tracking state policy and legislation on OER. Their State-by-State policy tracker is updated weekly during the legislative session and is a useful resource for understanding OER policy across the country and within the state.
In Texas there are several key pieces of legislation related to open educational resources. As discussed in the previous section, in 2017 the Texas Legislature passed SB 810 relating to open educational resources. This bill has three major components:
- Created a statewide OER grant program to encourage faculty at institutions of higher education to adopt, modify, redesign, or develop courses that use only open educational resources.
- Established protocols for OER course designations in course catalogs including discoverability by students to search for OER courses.
- Ordered a statewide feasibility study to determine the feasibility of creating a state repository of open educational resources. HB3652 described below is a direct result of this feasibility study.
You can find more information on the grant program in Unit 12. The second piece of this bill related to OER course designations will be discussed in further detail in the next section, Marking Your OER Courses.
Other significant OER bills in the state include:
- HB 3652 (2019): This bill requires the THECB to contract with a high-quality open educational resource repository to develop, by September 1, 2020, and maintain a web portal customized to meet the needs of individual institutions of higher education, students, and others who may benefit from access to open educational resources.
- HB 3650 (2019): This bill amends existing law and requires agreements between school districts and public institutions of higher education that provide dual credit programs to consider the use of free or low-cost open educational resources in courses offered under the program.
As a direct result of HB 3652, in September 2020, the THECB, in partnership with ISKME, launched the statewide OER repository, OERTX. Unit 12 provides more information about OERTX and opportunities for discovering, creating, and collaborating on the platform.
Finally, in 2021, Texas adopted HB 1027, codified as TEC, Section 51.4521, the first law in the nation to increase transparency for automatic textbook billing programs (also known as “inclusive access programs”). Legislators in Texas clearly have taken notice of the ability of affordable course materials, particularly OER, to support postsecondary student success and are providing increasing resources to support this.
