The Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE) has showcased the Ohio University Libraries’ alternative textbook efforts, an initiative that has already impacted more than 3,700 students and provided them with approximately $430,000 in annual savings for course materials.

In addition to their ongoing internal efforts, Ohio University Libraries joined the Open Textbook Network last fall. The Network, a nationwide consortium of approximately 600 academic institutions, collaborates to encourage the use and growth of open educational materials.

Some OHIO faculty members are also early adopters of open resource materials, which has demonstrated a cost savings to students through the availability of textbooks and other course materials. In FY17, the various efforts led to students seeing $740,563 in textbook savings, including through renting books, the Alt-Textbook Initiative and a three-year pilot implementation of Top Hat personal response system as an enterprise service to foster classroom engagement.

With Top Hat, which was announced last October, OHIO faculty can create interactive content and homework and tests and discover new course content. Students are anticipated to realize an estimated savings of $500,000 per semester through the successful adoption of open education resources.

Additional Efforts 
The University conducted a digital textbook pilot program earlier this spring to provide immediate access to digital course materials at a significantly lower cost. Students enrolled in select sections of certain courses received access to digital copies of their course materials on the first day of the semester.

These materials are available to students at the lowest price point OHIO can negotiate with publishers.

OHIO also continues to demonstrate its commitment to affordability and access for all students via a variety of other initiatives, including a Textbook Initiative that was launched by the office of the Executive Vice President and Provost. The initiative includes multiple strategies to reduce course materials cost.

The University continues to promote OHIO's textbook affordability efforts via offical social media feeds, including: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and its newest engagement channel, Snapchat.

Additional information regarding OHIO’s strategy and commitment to textbook affordability is available online.