Sylla for OER

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.

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, you can select “Import from file” and then drag and drop a syllabus. Sylla will then work to use your syllabus to fill in the relevant fields (don’t worry - Sylla deletes the file once it’s done creating the course shell). It will also prompt you for the privacy level you want - shared means other institutions can see your course and any material you adopt (this helps other instructors know what OER are popular!). You can also set it to Not Shared as well. Just review the fields that Sylla field out and make any changes you want.

Don’t want to upload your syllabus? That’s OK; you can enter the information yourself by selecting “Create New Course” in the upper right. Sylla will then ask you for information about the course, including the name, section code, and description. 

Other university instructors and students will not be able to see courses you’ve made unless you add them as collaborators.

Once you’ve created a course, you can use Sylla to find OER for you. Go to the course you created and select “Discover OER Content” in the upper right corner.

Sylla defaults to looking for OER for specific topics for a class. You can choose which topic you want to focus on by choosing the drop-down menu at the top of the page. Alternatively, you can select “Course” to view recommended options for the entire 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 the link next to “Source.”

If you find a resource you’re interested in, you can select “Bookmark” to save it.