Affordable Learning @ Seattle University

As you know, affordability is a major challenge in higher education that hinders our ability to recruit and retain students, and financial concerns hamper our students learning. Although tuition and housing are the largest expenses for students, course materials expenses are felt as uniquely burdensome by students. 

Course material costs are also where we as faculty can have the most direct impact on costs. While we don't set tuition or control the the local housing market, we do decide what materials students will be required to buy or rent for our courses. Taking steps to reduce or even eliminate students' material costs can improve learning outcomes as well as materially improve students' lives outside school.

What are OERs? 

Open Educational Resources (OERs) "are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use." The open licenses of OERs allow them to be reproduced and distributed to students for free in a wide variety of formats. They can be directly integrated into your Canvas sites, linked to on an external webpages, emailed to students, or cheaply printed and bound by the SUperCopy/Reprographics. (With traditional non-openly-licensed course packs, most of the cost comes from procuring the copyright permissions rather than the printing and binding.) The open licenses also give faculty the right to modify and remix OERs to meet their needs. 

OERs encompass a wide variety of types of materials. OERs can be anything from an entire course with all readings, assignments, and supporting materials included, to openly licensed textbooks written to replace commercial textbooks, to single assignments or presentations on specific topics.

Finding and selecting OERs

The Center for Digital Learning and Innovation (CDLI) Open Educational Resources page compiles a list of starting points for searching for OERs to use in your courses. You can also reach out to your liaison librarian for help with searching for OERs. 

Even if there's not an exact replacement for a commercial textbook for your course, you may be able to combine materials from multiple OERs or from a mix of OERs and free or less expensive commercial materials. Some faculty have achieved zero material costs in upper level courses even when there wasn't a suitable OER textbook by supplementing sections from more entry-level OER textbooks with a mix of materials that were freely available online as well as materials licensed by the library. 

If there are not OER that will work for your course, there are still steps you can take to make your course materials more affordable and accessibly.

Consider cost

• When selecting commercially published materials, be mindful of cost. Faculty have both freedom and responsibility to select course materials that meet students' needs, and while content is important, affordability and accessibility should also be top of mind when selecting course materials.

Set up your syllabus for savings

• Evaluate older editions of the material you select. If the changes between editions, consider keying your syllabus to page numbers in both the current and previous edition so students can more easily select lower-cost used materials.
• If you’re assigning novels or books that are available in many editions, consider keying your syllabus to something other than page numbers which usually change between editions. Instead keying to chapters, sections, or paragraphs can give students more freedom to choose the edition that meets their budget and needs. If there's a public domain version available online, include a link to that version in your syllabus and other materials.

Beginning of term suggestions

• Consider scanning the reading materials for the first week’s class(es) and making them available to students. This can be broadly beneficial for many students, not just those struggling with affordability. Used materials can take longer to find and ship, and students’ course schedules are often in flux at the beginning of the quarter or semester. Additionally, over the last few years delivery times have become less predictable, and finding materials out of stock at brick and mortar stores has become more common. Making the early readings available for students who need them can address all of these issues.