This valuable book demonstrates how librarians can use their collection, licensing, and faculty outreach know-how to help students and their instructors address skyrocketing textbook prices.

This collaboratively authored guide helps institutions navigate the uncharted waters of tagging course material as open educational resources (OER) or under a low-cost threshold by summarizing relevant state legislation, providing tips for working with stakeholders, and analyzing technological and process considerations. The first half of the book provides high-level analysis of the technology, legislation, and cultural change needed to operationalize course markings. The second half features case studies by Alexis Clifton, Rebel Cummings-Sauls, Michael Daly, Juville Dario-Becker, Tony DeFranco, Cindy Domaika, Ann Fiddler, Andrea Gillaspy Steinhilper, Rajiv Jhangiani, Leslie Kennedy, Brian Lindshield, Andrew McKinney, Nathan Smith, and Heather White.

"A must for educators, counselors and trainers who enjoy and understand the benefits of adventure-based activities. This is a book of initiative activities and problem-solving elements that you can create and use to start your own portable experiential challenge program or enhance the program you already have. All of the ideas here are presented with a tight budget in mind. The purpose is to provide a way for human services providers to afford the benefits challenge programming can offer" -- Cover.

The Evolution of Affordable Content Efforts in the Higher Education Environment: Programs, Case Studies, and Examples provides both inspiration and guidance for those beginning work on affordable content and evidence of the growth that has occurred in this arena over the last decade. While some institutions have been providing students affordable content options for over 100 years, many others have found the need to launch new programs in response to the escalating costs of higher education and the impact that has on student learning. This book provides examples from different types and sizes of institutions and includes voices from a wide range of contributors including faculty, instructional designers, academic technologists, librarians, bookstore staff, and more. The Evolution of Affordable Content demonstrates the range of affordable content options that are possible today-from openly licensed content to library licensed materials and all inclusive purchase models to institution-wide student textbook rental models.

Affordable education. Transparent science. Accessible scholarship. These ideals are slowly becoming a reality thanks to the open education, open science, and open access movements. Running separate—if parallel—courses, they all share a philosophy of equity, progress, and justice. This book shares the stories, motives, insights, and practical tips from global leaders in the open movement.

Shortly after the syllabi are posted, and long before the beginning of the term, interlibrary loan departments at academic libraries will have filled or rejected innumerable textbook requests. While it would be unwise if not impossible to buy and circulate every textbook at a college or university, there are many academic libraries who are selectively adding textbooks to their collections. And the practice seems to be gaining momentum. In this volume, the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) and editor Chris Diaz gather case studies that pull together creative approaches and best practices for print textbook reserve programs. This book discusses such topics as results and analysis from a detailed survey of a state university’s core-course textbook reserve program; funding sources for starting or piloting a program;using aggregated enrollment, grade, and textbook cost data to identify "high impact" courses;identifying course-related books that are in the library’s collection or fit an existing collection policy;workflow for using bookstore data with ILS and purchasing systems; andusing LibGuides and Google Sheets to publicize textbook holdings, and how a back-end database supports discovery for students and reporting for reserves staff. A textbook reserve program can be one way of helping students who are struggling with the high cost of textbooks, and this book spotlights a variety of examples that can be used as models.

Whether they recognize it or not, virtually all colleges and universities face three GrandChallenges:·Improve the learning outcomes of a higher education: A large majority of college graduates are weak in capabilities that faculty and employers both see as crucial.·Extend more equitable access to degrees: Too often, students from underserved groups and poor households either don’t enter college or else drop out without a degree. The latter group may be worse off economically than if they’d never attempted college.·Make academic programs more affordable (in money and time) for students and other important stakeholder groups: Many potential students believe they lack the money or time needed for academic success. Many faculty believe they don’t have time to make their courses and degree programs more effective. Many institutions believe they can’t afford to improve outcomes.These challenges are global. But, in a higher education system such as that in the United States, the primary response must be institutional. This book analyzes how, over the years, six pioneering colleges and universities have begun to make visible, cumulative progress on all three fronts.