67 SPEC Kit 351: Affordable Course Content and Open Educational Resources
NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
Alt-Textbook Project
https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/alttextbook
textbooks.
The Problem with Textbooks
Runaway textbook costs on college campuses have become a major impediment to student success.
Textbook costs have outpaced inflation by 300% over the last 30 years.
Students spend an average of $1,200 per year on textbooks.
7 out of 10 students have forgone purchasing college textbooks because of cost, according to a recent
PIRG survey on 13 college campuses.
Open Educational Resources: A Solution
Many alternatives to the current textbook publishing landscape have emerged in the last decade, allowing
faculty to easily find and use current, high-quality free online Open Educational Resources for their courses.
Projects such as Open Textbook Library and OpenStax College provide access to free, peer-reviewed
textbooks covering a wide variety of subjects, while other initiatives such as OpenStax CNX and Merlot II
provide repositories of peer-reviewed open educational materials that can be remixed and customized by
faculty who wish to build their own textbook or course materials.
Projects at NCSU
The 2014-15 Alt-Textbook OERs are out and being used in courses this semester!
Projects from the first round span nine schools and departments, represent innovative strategies for
pedagogical change such as Maria Gallardo-Williams' nationally-recognized S.M.A.R.T. lab videos and
Sabrina Robertson and Carlos Goller's BIT OER project, and have collectively saved NCSU students more
than $200,000 in 2015.
Alt-Textbook projects from the first round include:
Dr. Andrew Cooper's (Mathematics) MA225: Foundations of Advanced Mathematics
Dr. Michael Evans' (Curriculum, Instruction, and Counselor Education) ECI 515: Online Collaborations in
Education
Maria Gallardo-Williams' (Chemistry) CH226: Organic Chemistry I Lab
Juliana Kocsis' (Foreign Languages) FLE 201: Oral Communication in English for International Students
Janell Moretz's (Parks, Recreation and Sport Management) PRT 238: Diversity and Inclusion in Parks,
Recreation and Sport Management
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