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Working Toward a More Accessible and Affordable Student Experience

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OER

Finding Affordable Courses

Instructors can now add a new LionPATH course attribute to indicate that their course section’s required texts costs are free or low-cost, or under $50.

Screen grab of ROAM, the Repository of Open and Affordable Resources

Libraries launches ROAM

Penn State University Libraries’ Open Publishing unit recently launched ROAM, a newly expanded online publication service for openly licensed educational materials authored by Penn State faculty.

OAER

Open Education Engagement Sessions return in November

Online sessions introduce instructors and other University employees to open education topics with the potential to reduce the cost of course materials for students.

By the Numbers

Over $4,800,000


Since February 2017, a total potential cost savings for students is over $4,800,000, and growing each semester.

More than 5


Penn State has more than 5 OER or affordable course content programs.

90+ Courses


There are over 90 OER courses in Penn State’s Repository Open Affordable Materials (ROAM).

OAER Champions

Dr. Vinayak Elangovan

Title: OAER Champion: Dr. Vinayak Elangovan.
“I love open educational resources because I use more than one textbook for reference for my courses and students have free access to those textbooks. It gives flexibility to teach various topics with more application examples.”<
Dr. Elangovan uses free or low-cost books/materials in these courses:
CMPSC121: Introduction to Programming Techniques,
CMPSC 132: Programming and Computation II: Data Structures,
CMPSC 445: Applied Machine Learning in Data Science.
Open and Affordable Educational Resources
Dr. Robin Yaure

Title: OAER Champion Dr. Robin Yaure.
“I use OAER materials since I know that many students struggle with the high-cost of traditional textbooks and often go without the necessary reading materials for class.”
Dr. Yaure uses free or low-cost books/materials in these courses:
PSYCH 301W: Basic Research in Psychology,
PSYCH 256: Cognitive Psychology ,
HDFS 129 (in progress): Intro to HDFS,
Open and Affordable Educational Resources
Elliot Copeland

Title: OAER Champion Elliot Copeland
Abington Student Government Association President
“With the cost of a college education continuing to increase, students need affordable materials. I’m proud of SGA’s partnerships with faculty to make Penn State Abington a leader in adopting and using OAER, and students have seen tangible benefits already.”
Open and Affordable Educational Resources

Students’ Thoughts

A student portrait.

“Sometimes you feel like you need extra information after lecture and the Pressbook is amazing! it breaks the information down in a way that it is extremely informative but also easy to digest.”

Portrait of student with Covid mask.

“The Pressbook was very helpful to me when studying. I used it to gather more information about the topic that we were learning. I also really liked using the self-check boxes at the end so I could check to make sure I was comprehending the material correctly. “ 
Portrait of a student.

“The Pressbook provides a ton of helpful information and activities regarding PTA lectures; it is a great study tool!”

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