Looking for help finding and exploring possible open educational resources (OER) for your class? Try out Sylla, a new tool offered through the University Libraries and available for free to all UNR instructors.
Sylla allows you to put in information about specific courses and books and will then look for potential replacements. Instead of having to search lots of various sources for open textbooks, Sylla makes it easy to search in one place.
Just go to Sylla’s login page and enter your university email address (you can ignore the password field!) Once you’ve entered your email, the form will change to allow you to sign on through the university’s Single Sign On system.
How to use Sylla
You have two options for using Sylla: enter specific textbooks or enter a specific course.
Entering a course
If you’d like to find OER for a specific course, you can create a new course by going “My Studio” on the left and then selecting “Courses.” To create a new course, just select “Create New Course” in the upper right corner.
Sylla will then ask you for information about the course, including the name, section code, and description. You can keep it brief if you like, but the more information you provide, the more accurate your results will likely be. You’ll also be asked which organizational unit you wish to pair it with – just choose the University of Nevada, Reno.
On the next page, you’ll be prompted to enter your learning outcomes. On the third page, you may enter your own topics or have Sylla do that for you by choosing “Generate Topics.” You may edit Sylla-generated topics if you like.
Other university instructors and students will not be able to see courses you’ve made unless you add them as collaborators.
Entering resources
If you want to look up OER by a specific book, you can go to “Resources” under “My Studio” on the navigation pane. From this page, select “Add Resource” in the upper right corner.
You’ll then see a search bar to look up books by title. Sylla will try to find books already in its system as you type; if the right title doesn’t pop up, though, don’t worry! Just scroll to the bottom of the suggested titles list and choose “New.”
You’ll then be prompted to enter more information about the book – all of the fields, including the ISBN, are required.
You also have the option to add the resource to a course you’ve made in Sylla – just select “Click here” at the top of the Add a book page.
Finding OER
Whether you created a course or added a book, you can use Sylla to find OER for you. Go to either the resource or the course you created and select “Discover OER Content” in the upper right corner.
Sylla defaults to looking for OER for specific chapters (for books) or topics (for courses). You can choose which topic or chapter you want to focus on by choosing the drop-down menu at the top of the page. Alternatively, you can select “Book” or “Course” to view recommended options for the entire resource or course.
Sylla will automatically search for 20 potential options. You can change your results by selecting the “Filter” button.
You can explore the results by using the horizontal navigation menu under “Resource Recommendations.” Just select a title, and it will display information about the work for you below. If you want to know why Sylla recommended an item, you can select “Explain.” If you want to view the title, just select “View book.”
If you find a resource you’re interested in, you can select “Add to list” to save it. While you can adopt books directly through Sylla, you can also talk with your subject librarian about finding the original source for the OER as well.