A
number of colleges and universities have kicked off the new academic year with
announcements of initiatives intended to save students on their course
materials expenses. Here are a few:
The
board of governors for Florida’s state university system approved a $656,000 program to develop a catalog of lower-cost digital course materials. The
catalog will list open educational resources (OER) available free online, along
with digital versions of traditional textbooks available at a reduced price
negotiated with the publishers. The catalog will be ready in time for the fall
2018 term.
Fort
Hays State University, Hays, KS, launched several projects through its Open Textbook Grant Program this fall. The program, administered by the campus library with
funding from the FHSU Foundation, provided grants to several faculty to create
or adapt open books or supplemental materials for their courses.
The
Colorado Legislature appointed a 14-member Open Educational Resources Council
to recommend how public institutions could boost the use of OER. The council
has also been charged with developing a repository of digital OER.
Madison
Area Technical College, Eau Claire, WI, approved a new policy to standardize
the adoption of textbooks for classes, with a view toward cutting costs for
students. Academic programs and departments are expected to adopt books for at
least three academic years, where feasible, and to submit book selections on time
in order to increase the availability of rentals and used books at the campus
bookstore.
The
University of Missouri and Northwest Missouri State University have agreed to explore
ways they could share open educational resources that their respective
faculties have developed or discovered online.
The
impact of programs like these, as well as other ideas for helping to lower the
cost of course materials, will be discussed at the Textbook Affordability Conference Nov. 10-12 at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.
