Coventry University and Sylla collaborate to grow the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) across 2,000 modules: covering its full undergraduate programme
25 March 2025 — Sylla, an innovative platform empowering libraries to advance open & affordable educational resources at scale, is excited to announce the expansion of its collaboration with Coventry University.
Coventry University and Sylla will work together to enable academics and module leads to easily discover and adopt high quality Open Educational Resources (OERs) to support their teaching and benefit all students, ensuring they have free access to essential learning content.
Phil Brabban, Chief Librarian at Coventry University, welcomed the expanded programme: “Our collaboration with Sylla has been instrumental in enabling the University to make the strategic shift from costly commercial textbooks to Open Content alternatives. Institutions can no longer afford the often egregious prices of multi-user library licences for electronic texts and students can ill afford to bear the cost of the printed versions. Sylla is absolutely the disruptor the sector needs in supporting the move to a more sustainable open content future.”
This work follows on from a successful pilot program that resulted in a £95,000 saving on commercial textbook costs, transitioning 10 high-enrolment modules in the School of Business to high-quality open textbooks. Where this collaboration will now be expanded - making progress to cover the full undergraduate programme of approximately 2,000 modules and operate at scale. By leveraging OER, the university is committed to shift to a more sustainable approach around the provision of educational resources that can fuel a richer student experience.
Jointly, we’ll be working across the institution: supporting library staff, academics and module leads and connecting them with OER options for their specific modules. Academics and module leads can continue to choose from a rich set of learning resources for their modules, while Sylla saves them precious time in identifying these options and how these resources can be tailored to their teaching. Through this effort, we will now take the next step in realising a strategic shift: moving away from commercial textbooks to high-quality open content - realising financial savings at scale ahead of the next academic year.
"We are really excited to expand this partnership and show the capabilities of the Sylla platform at full scale.’’ says Tom Mosterd, Director, Higher Education. ‘’Coventry is leading the way in the UK, looking to grow and streamline the adoption of OER at scale. We look forward to continuing this journey together and building towards a more open and sustainable model for educational resources with the wider sector.’’
For more information please visit sylla.io or contact Tom Mosterd (tom.mosterd@sylla.io) to learn more.
About Sylla
Sylla works with universities and colleges around the world: partnering with their libraries and teaching and learning teams. Sylla makes it easier for libraries and their educators to adopt high quality, open, and affordable learning resources available at zero cost to their students.
