4th Annual Affordable Learning Solutions Workshop & Textbook Affordability Conference Feb. 11-13, 2015, San Diego, CA

[Leslie Kennedy]

Here’s an excellent opportunity for your campus to continue to keep a CSU education affordable for our students.

This year we will be combining the 4th Annual Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) workshop to support campuses designing and deploying their customized campus AL$ initiative with the national Textbook Affordability Conference (TAC).  The conference program includes legislative, library, open educational resources, textbook, and faculty leaders in the affordable course materials national ecosystem.  The conference program will include successful strategies and exemplary practices in deploying affordable course materials by institutions, libraries, vendors, and campus bookstores from within and outside the CSU.

At the AL$ workshop scheduled for Friday afternoon (February 13^th), we will be providing:

1. Guidance on using systemwide AL$ services, training, and tools for your local initiatives
2. Guidance on developing a proposal to receive funding from the Chancellor’s Office to support your campus AL$ initiative.  To receive funding, attendance by a campus representative is required. Last year, each campus received about  $20,000 for their local AL$ proposal.  We expect the same amount of funding available per campus this year.

At last year’s event, AL$ representatives from campuses shared successful deployment initiatives on how more affordable and high quality course materials can be widely adopted by faculty and students.  Attendees included faculty, librarians, library staff, academic technology staff, bookstore staff.

The Chancellor’s Office sponsored the Textbook Affordability Conference registration for two CSU participants from each campus – a $399 value per registrant. 

Twenty CSU campuses are implementing their own Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) program and many students have benefited from the lower cost of instructional materials.  We look forward to seeing you or representatives from your university at the affordable learning solutions event to continue to expand affordable course materials’ solutions to the CSU faculty and students.

If you have questions, feel free to email [e-mail].

Cheers,
Gerry

 

Gerard L. Hanley, Ph.D.

Assistant Vice Chancellor, Academic Technology Services

Executive Director, MERLOT

California State University, Office of the Chancellor

401 Golden Shore

Long Beach, CA, USA  90802

562-951-4259

[e-mail]

AL$ Workshop PPT and RFP Information by G. Hanley

[Leslie Kennedy]

The agenda for the AL$ portion of the conference scheduled for Friday, Feb. 13th from 1:30 - 5:30 is attached.

[Leslie Kennedy]

The AL$ 2015 Grant opportunity is described in the attached.

Due around March 13, 2015.

If you have any questions, please email [e-mail]

Thank you,

Leslie

[Leslie Kennedy]

The COOL4Ed grant funding opportunity is attached.

Due around March 13, 2015.

Thanks

Leslie

[LauraS]

I thought the TAC Conference in San Diego, Feb. 2015, was a great way to meet others doing what I do which is campaigning to save students money by using OER or more affordable textbook alternatives. I manage the Technology and Learning Program at CSU, Chico, and we are doing a lot to take a bite out of this issue. Please visit our website, www.csuchico.edu/cals/tap/.

I'll attach a copy of my notes (in PDF) from the two day conference, because I was very engaged in all the sessions. Would love to talk with others who attended, or who missed it, to share what we learned. I coordinate our Textbook Affordability Project (TAP) at CSU, Chico.

Laura Sederberg

[e-mail]

[Leslie Kennedy]

Additional RFP information

[LauraS]

Thanks for this additional resource, Leslie. It is helpful for us in Chico right now, as we are also accepting applications for our 7th Academy e-Learning program which meets in June. Some of those faculty may well want to apply for the COOL4Ed Open Textbook Adoption project at the same time, since we already talk and encourage use of OER and our own TAP program. More opportunity for faculty to get paid something to do what they might want to do anyway, cutting costs for their students.

We shared the OpenSTAX collection with our current TAP2 faculty yesterday, and they are encouraged by this. Good things are happening everyday.

Thanks again, Leslie and Gerry for all you are doing for the CSU.Laura Sederberg

[LauraS]

For those who want to see what we are doing at Chico, visit our website for AL$, call CALS and TAP, www.csuchico.edu/cals/.

Current project for second year of TAP:  http://www.csuchico.edu/cals/tap/projects2014.shtml.

Laura

[Fred Neely]

Follow up documents discussed during TAC and AL$ sessions this past week.

Make Textbooks More Affordable:

Student PIRGs Report: Fixing the Broken Textbook Market http://www.studentpirgs.org/reports/sp/fixing-broken-textbook-market

NACS Academic Content Licensing White Paper 2014 PDF attached

Both will be available on the AL$ website www.csuAffordableLearningSolutions.org

[Leslie Kennedy]

Textbook Affordability Conference Follow Up

The presentation slides (PPTs) for most of the sessions have been posted to the following web link:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8ZbKuFol2D7TW1JMUpDV0dqNXc...

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Thank you,

Leslie