Combined Alternative Textbook Program: Helping Students Success in the Classroom

Librarians at East Carolina University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro propose a combined alternative textbook project to run simultaneously at both institutions. This proposal is for a Literacy and Lifelong Learning project grant spanning two years. Sharing best practices, procedures, and promotional materials, the librarians have a two-pronged approach to reduce students' textbook costs and increase their academic engagement. One strategy is to award departmental faculty mini-grants to adopt, adapt, or create Open Educational Resources as the bases for their syllabi. The second strategy is to work with the university bookstore to identify required texts that either the library already owns or can purchase as ebooks for unlimited simultaneous users. Benefits to students include a reduction in the cost of attending college and an increased opportunity for engagement and academic success in their classes. The potential return on investment will be substantial; the program at UMass Amherst estimated $205,000 from their first $27,000 invested, and currently estimates $1.3M in student savings. In creating this new project, librarians are building on independent pilots from both schools that will be combined to develop materials and procedures that can be used across the state to duplicate the program.

Scholars @ ECU