Textbook Heroes

Lisa Sharpe Elles

Associate Teaching Professor
Chemistry

OER created: 

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.

Increasing educational opportunity:

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 Open Stax 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.

“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.”