How to Lower Course Costs (20 mins)
In the previous section, you were asked to take a look at the cost of enrolling in your course. If you have decided to reduce costs, please see the resources below to guide you! A key resource is the King Library's special unit of librarians dedicated to finding low- and no-cost course materials for CSU students, referred to as Affordable Learning Solutions Links to an external site. or AL$.
Thank you for taking the time to audit the cost of your course materials and considering ways to offer low- or no-cost materials to your students.
Keep Your Existing Materials
Our first suggestion is aimed at those who do not want to change the content of their materials but want to make sure they are available to students for free or at the lowest possible cost.
To do that, we recommend working directly with your subject librarian. Every department has a dedicated librarian; you can locate yours on King Library's Find Your Librarian Links to an external site. page. Email them your text list and your librarian will investigate options. Alternatively, you may wish to reach out to our AL$ librarians Links to an external site. who are also aware of low- and no-cost options.
Your librarian will check to see if your materials are available in digital format for library usage. As a general policy, SJSU's King Library will acquire digital copies with full-campus licenses whenever possible. Many publishers, however, especially Cengage and Pearson, have stopped offering library licenses in order to promote their rent-to-student business model. This bypasses the library model of free access to educational materials and eliminates the possibility of students' reselling their used textbooks. Your librarian will check to see if your existing sources can be acquired by the library and thus offered to the whole campus in digital format at no cost to students.
Your librarian may also look at other options, such as making chapters of your textbook available via the library and Canvas, rather than the entire book. In addition, there is the traditional option of a print reserve copy. In this instance, students can check out a print copy of a textbook for a set amount of time. Recently, we've found that students tend to check out a print item just long enough to scan it with a PDF reader on their phones or other devices.
Our next suggestion is for those who are open to looking at substitute materials.
Explore Less Expensive or Free Materials
Our AL$ team has provided the following suggestions for exploring less expensive course materials:
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Give OER a try.
Take advantage of the open educational resources Links to an external site. (OER) directory AL$ compiled. OERs are designed to be reused, remixed, and shared, so you can customize your materials. -
Prep your students.
In the week before and the first week of each semester, library staffers see a high number of students asking for library versions of their textbooks because the bookstore or publisher versions are too expensive. We recommend that instructors use the Announcements in their Canvas courses to let students know what materials will be required and to point them to the AL$ Resources for Students Links to an external site. page so they can find the best solutions for their needs. AL$ librarians will walk students through finding the least expensive option and periodically offer grants for free textbooks to students. You can point your students to AL$'s Don't-Go-Textbook-Broke program typically offered at the start of every semester. -
Avoid costly test packs or add-ons for quizzes.
These can be expensive for students; alternately, test banks can often be imported into Canvas for free. Contact Academic Technology Links to an external site. for help with this. -
Leave the loose-leaf.
The publishers may pitch this as a lower-cost option, but this type of text can't be resold. Many students count on reselling their textbooks, and this strategy undermines the used-book market. -
Consolidate readings.
Are you using multiple texts but assigning just a portion of each text? Custom publishers offer faculty the ability to create a custom textbook including articles, book chapters, websites, and other materials. Custom publishers provide copyright clearance and a running total price as you build your book. CSU has partnered with Xanedu Links to an external site. to facilitate instructors' compiling their own custom textbooks. Please register by requesting more information with Xanedu using your sjsu.edu email address. -
Communicate with the campus bookstore Links to an external site..
Submitting course material requests to the bookstore on time allows them to buy back books at the end of the semester and offer a sufficient supply of used books. When ordering materials, ask the bookstore for suggestions on reducing costs and/or various packaging options. -
Take it easy.
Consider sticking with a textbook even when a new edition is released, as older versions can be significantly less expensive than new releases. Some instructors offer the older version and supplement it with new content in a separate resource: for example, you could assign an earlier edition of a textbook but have two chapters of the newest material available on Canvas. -
Start fresh.
You can always start fresh! Make an inventory of what you're looking for in your materials. Collaborate with colleagues, or your librarians, to see how you can meet your Course Learning Outcomes with alternative resources. You could also build in textbook review as a part of your course. Optionally, for a description of how faculty have audited their syllabi with the help of their students, please refer to this case study: Fischer, P., & Harris, J. (2022, June 21). If you’re not auditing your curriculum for diversity, know your students will Links to an external site.. Harvard Business Publishing Education.
Next
Thank you for completing the module on auditing your syllabus for cost. In the next module, you will reflect on ways to audit your syllabus for representation.