Higher Education and Teaching Commons^™

Textbook Alternatives: Options For Students And Faculty, Michele D. Behr

Academic Leadership Academy

The issue of course textbooks continues to be a challenge at WMU as well as in all of higher education. For students the primary concern is textbook prices. Students often spend several hundred dollars per semester for required textbooks, at a time when tuition and other costs of attending college are increasing as well. Faculty are of course sensitive to student concerns and frustrations about textbook prices, but may be unaware of other options to cover the same content. Currently there is a movement toward Open Educational Resources (OER) which is a way to provide open access to high quality …