Chemistry faculty Lisa Sharpe Elles named KU Libraries 2025 Textbook Hero

When Lisa Sharpe Elles stands in front of her introductory Chemistry class, the auditorium almost seems to shrink, with her welcoming style, interactive quiz questions, and frequent opportunities for student feedback invoking a small class feel. Sharpe Elles’ goal is to make the course as accessible as possible, a value that has also driven her to transition from costly textbook and homework systems to free open educational resources (OER), earning her recognition as KU Libraries 2025 Textbook Hero.  

Sharpe Elles, an Associate Teaching Professor in the chemistry department, began her journey to OER over several semesters, when she noticed that some students had difficulties or delays accessing required textbooks and ancillary materials, hampering their progress in courses.  

“Whenever students would enroll in the class and we were using a paid textbook, there would always be a couple students who would come to me in the third week of class and say, ‘I just got my book’ or ‘I just got my money now, so now I can start doing the work,’” Sharpe Elles said.  

Beginning in the spring 2019 semester, Sharpe Elles incorporated OER through LibreTexts for her CHEM 110 classes, eliminating the cost of a textbook for the course. In 2021, she switched from a publisher-paid online homework system to LibreTexts ADAPT, free to her students because of her work as an editor on the platform, where she has helped expand and enhance OER content over the past five years.  

This year, KU’s Chemistry Department paid for a site license to make the iClicker platform -- a student engagement tool used to encourage active learning during lectures -- free to students, ensuring CHEM 110 is completely free of textbook and ancillary costs.  

Sharpe Elles said the response from students has been positive, with grateful students sharing that the costs of course books and homework systems are a burden, and it’s a welcome relief to reduce their overall class-related costs.  

Dedicated to expanding the benefits of open resources to more students, Sharpe Elles also extended her OER use to the CHEM 130/135 sequence this past fall, employing an OpenStax chemistry textbook and ADAPT homework system, making both semesters of general chemistry free for the students in her classes. She estimates this translates to cost savings of $25,000 to KU students for the 2023-2024 school year alone. Using the Open Education Network's widely used $100 per student impacted method, the estimated savings exceed $50,000. 

“Dr. Sharpe Elles has been passionate about using OER in her chemistry classrooms for over five years,” said Heather Mac Bean, KU Libraries Open Education Librarian. “She found a solution to address her students’ need for a no-cost textbook and ancillary materials in a course with typically high textbook costs.”  

“I’d like for more people to be using open,” Sharpe Elles said. “I think that it definitely helps the students who can’t buy the book on day one.” 

KU Libraries advocate for and support the use of open textbooks and other OER through a variety of initiatives, including grants, consultations, presentations, events, and other outreach. Since its inception, the OER Grant Initiative has provided 44 awards to KU instructors with an estimated annual savings of more than $1.2 million for KU students. The libraries support OER publishing via the Pressbooks platform, collaborating with co-authors to publish their work openly, with 24 titles in the KU Pressbooks catalog and more than 20 in development.