Relaying a question asked in Mastodon by Robin DeRosa @actualham
Hey oer folks-- I am looking for a university/college/system that does course-marking (marks lo- or no-cost courses for books) that contracts with Barnes and Noble. My l B&N bookstore manager is helping us set-up course-marking and he would like to reach out to bookstore managers from B&N where this is happening for some inside intel. Anyone?
I’m not on Mastodon, but a few of the CalState University campuses like CalState LA have Barnes and Noble bookstores and are required to mark their courses.
Thanks Cailyn, I will track responses here and share the link with Robin.
I posted a copy of Robin’s question the CCCOER Community List and will copy responses here:
From Bryan McGeary at Penn State University @bryanmcgeary
We have course marking at Penn State and have Barnes and Noble as our bookstore. I would say that our course marking initiative is more a result of work done by our course schedulers and registrar, rather than by the bookstore, because the marking happens in the course registration system, rather than the bookstore’s system. However, B&N makes it possible for our faculty to indicate that they are using OER in their system. More information about our course marking initiative can be found on this page and in this news story. Our bookstore manager is Jennifer Guyer (email available) Hope that helps.
Thank you, everyone!!
One more just in via the CCCOER email group from Nathan Smith at Houston Community Colleges @Nathan
We use Barnes & Noble Education as our campus bookstore and we have a course marking system.
I wrote this course markings case study about our process:
https://uta.pressbooks.pub/markingopenandaffordablecourses/chapter/houston-community-college/We created an internal marking system that is independent of BNED and identifies Zero Cost and Low Cost courses in our student information system (PeopleSoft). On their end, BNED uses their Adoptions and Insights Portal for all text and textbook adoptions where there is an OER option. When faculty go in to order their textbooks, they just indicate that they’re not using any course materials (not my favorite wording for this, btw) and then they toggle the indicator for OER.
Then, when students go into the Barnes & Noble College bookstore website to search for their course, they get the following message indicating that there are “No Course Materials Required” (again, not ideal). NB: I used different courses in this example because I’m ordering for Fall now, but students can only find their materials for summer.
Hope that helps! And say hello to Robin for me!
And also note for those interested in Course Markings, my colleague @heatherb reminds us that coming up July 8, CCCOER is hosting a webinar:
This takes place in your local time 2025-07-08T19:00:00Z→2025-07-08T20:00:00Z
Register to attend and if you cannoy be there, the recording will be shared afterword
