Save time
Use AI for searching, sorting, organizing evidence, and first-pass comparison work that can otherwise consume hours.
About the field guide
The OER Promptbook
A practical field guide for busy community college faculty who want help finding, evaluating, comparing, and planning with OER without handing academic judgment over to AI.
AI helps with the first pass. People verify the evidence and make the decisions.
Why it exists
OER Work Should Not Become a Second Job
Finding and adopting open or zero-cost course materials can save students money, but the faculty work behind that change can be substantial. Searching across repositories, comparing resources, checking licenses and access, replacing teaching supports, and figuring out how new materials fit an existing course can quickly become a project of its own.
The OER Promptbook is designed to reduce some of that first-pass work. It helps you start with the problem in front of you, use a focused AI prompt, and get to a manageable next step without requiring a full course redesign or expertise in prompt writing.
Who it is for
Built First for Faculty, With Support Roles in Mind
The main task routes are designed for faculty, including adjunct faculty who may have limited time or limited familiarity with local OER and ZTC processes. The site also includes optional workflows for librarians and OER/ZTC liaisons who support faculty, research local access, or help coordinate campus efforts.
You do not need to know which repository to search, how to write a sophisticated AI prompt, or who handles every local process before you begin. Start with the task you need to finish. When a question depends on your college, library, or district, the Promptbook should help you identify what to ask rather than guess the local answer.
Field principles
The Approach
Keep judgment human
AI can surface possibilities and organize tradeoffs. People still verify sources, licensing, accessibility evidence, quality, course fit, and local requirements.
Change only what you need
Moving toward OER or ZTC does not have to mean rebuilding a course from the ground up. Replace one piece, one unit, or one major resource when that is enough.
About the Project
The OER Promptbook is an independent faculty project created and maintained by Karen Crozer. It is designed for practical OER and zero-cost course-material work, with a particular focus on community college teaching.
I maintain the project on a volunteer basis. It will continue to evolve through corrections, shared prompts, feedback, and the experiences of educators using these workflows in real courses.
How AI Was Used to Build the Promptbook
The prompting strategies grew out of my own use of AI-assisted searches while moving courses toward OER and zero-textbook-cost materials. I used AI to help refine prompts, organize guidance, test different workflows, and identify places where a process could be made clearer or less time-consuming.
I reviewed, revised, and made the final decisions about what appears in the maintained Promptbook. The same principle applies to using it: AI can help with the first pass, but the evidence and professional judgment still need to stand on their own.
Use the Promptbook Beside OER Collections You Trust
The Promptbook can work with resource lists you already trust. For California Community College faculty, the ASCCC OERI OER collections by discipline are one useful starting point. You can bring promising titles or links from those collections into a Promptbook task rather than asking AI to search from scratch.
You can also use a trusted PDF, spreadsheet, document, or other source file as the starting material when your AI tool supports uploads.
Independence note: The OER Promptbook is an independent faculty project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by ASCCC, ASCCC OERI, the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office, or any individual California Community College.
License and Reuse
Unless otherwise noted, original educational content created for The OER Promptbook is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). You may share and adapt that content with attribution for noncommercial purposes.
This license does not automatically apply to community-submitted prompts, embedded third-party materials, or material that carries a separate license or rights statement. Those materials remain subject to their own terms.
OER Fit: English
For California Community College English faculty who want course-specific OER reviews rather than a prompt workflow, my separate OER Fit: English project compares resources against transparent criteria built from authoritative course documents.
OER Fit also demonstrates a process that can be replicated for other courses: frame the course with a detailed rubric, use AI for a structured first pass, then test the findings against the source material and make the final human judgment.
Add to the field notes
Have a Prompt or Idea to Share?
If you have a prompt that worked well, a workflow that would be useful to add, or an idea other educators might want to try, share it through the Community Prompt Lab. Community submissions stay separate from the maintained core Promptbook so people can experiment, adapt, and verify what works for them.