Free Open Educational Resources

Associate Professor Chris Kanich

Associate Professor Chris Kanich was named a 2024-25 Open Textbook Faculty Incentive Program awardee for the course materials he is creating for CS 484, Secure Web Application Development.

The Office of the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and the University Library runs the program, which “encourages faculty to use and develop free open educational resources as alternatives to traditional textbooks for undergraduate courses.” The program was developed in response to student concerns about the high cost of course materials.

“One of the biggest challenges with teaching my class is that it’s in the fast-paced world of web development. Things that are ‘hot’ and ‘best practice’ today will be substantially outdated in literally a few months,” Kanich said.

Kanich, who is also one of the department’s directors of undergraduate studies, is taking the core set of concepts he teaches students and integrating them into a cohesive set of materials written in his voice that are free to use.

“The materials aren’t going to just disappear from the web before I teach the class again,” Kanich said. “The materials will be presented in a way that’s permissive and allows others to help keep the course materials up to date as they continue to teach similar classes.”

Kanich currently uses a collection of links to blog posts that explain relevant topics, posted on his course schedule, but notes shortcomings to this; the posts aren’t written cohesively, and are often part of ads for software that the company hosting the blog sells.

The university predicts that in one semester, more than 900 students who enroll in the awardees’ courses could save approximately $110,000 by using the open educational resources instead of buying new textbooks.