Textbook Alternatives & Open Educational Resources (OER): Other OER Initiatives

Projects at a variety of higher education institutions that "encourage faculty to replace their commercial textbooks with alternate resources such as OER and licensed library content (which is openly available to all the members of that institution)."

"An illustrative, rather than comprehensive, collection of examples, success stories, and related issues"

"Our community supports the Open Textbook Library, a comprehensive resource for openly licensed academic textbooks. All textbooks are free, and the majority are peer reviewed. When you join the Open Education Network, you become part of a supportive community that works together to make higher education more open. The Open Education Network’s programs are designed to ignite, support, and sustain the needs of our community."

"The University of Minnesota Libraries invites faculty and instructors to apply for a competitive grant to work with library staff to implement affordable high quality content options into their courses as an alternative to high cost commercial textbooks and other expensive course materials."

"The CSU’s Affordable Learning Solutions Campaign is designed to enable faculty to choose and provide quality educational content that is more affordable for their students."

"The Open Education Initiative is a faculty incentive program that encourages the use of existing low-cost or free information resources to support our students’ learning. Information Literacy will also be emphasized, creating opportunities for students to develop and practice the skills of critical thinking, reasoning, communication, and integration of knowledge and perspectives."

"This new initiative incentivizes instructors to use low-cost or free alternatives to expensive course materials; these can include open-access scholarly resources, Library-licensed and owned resources, and learning objects and texts that faculty create themselves."

"Tidewater Community College (TCC) partnered with Lumen Learning to develop and support 21 OER-based “Z courses” that make up the zero textbook cost “Z-Degree,” an associate of science degree program in business administration."