The traditional model of textbook publishing is based on for-profit companies selling textbooks that are purchased by students and/or educational institutions and the cost of commercial textbooks increases at a rate that far outpaces the normal rate of inflation. As this exponential increase in textbook costs has not slowed over the years, and thus movements to find solutions that provide textbooks at either no cost or a low-cost are emerging – known as affordable course materials. There are many benefits in shifting from commercial to affordable course materials for students, instructors, and other stakeholders. If you are considering converting part of course, an entire course, or multiple courses from commercial to affordable course materials and would like assistance in identifying affordable materials, contact UNC's
Textbook Affordability Librarian | Stephanie Wiegand | stephanie.wiegand@unco.edu
Instructor-Created Materials
Original content authored by faculty or instructors for the courses they teach. Formats include text, audio recordings, video recordings, and much more. This category also includes instructor-created ancillary materials such as slide decks, quizzes, and tests.
Student-Created Materials
A form of open pedagogy, students create course materials and/or ancillary materials as part of their coursework. Examples include a course wiki that introduces course concepts and digital flash cards created in a third-party app.
Open Educational Resources (OER)
Teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that have been released under an open (often Creative Commons) license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation, and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.
Open Access Materials (OA)
Journal articles and books that are free, immediately accessible, and online with users allowed to use the materials freely in the digital environment. OA allows for access and use, but not for adaptation or redistribution. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) are examples of OA collections.
Library-Licensed Educational Resources (LER)
Content and resources that are paid for by the University Libraries and openly available to the UNC community through user authentication. Not all electronic library materials are licensed for simultaneous use by an entire class, but many are.
Authoritative Free-to-Use Web Content
Materials determined by the instructor to be factual and accurate and are freely available through the internet. Resources include TED Talks, Khan Academy, TED Ed, iTunes U, PBS Frontline, EdX, YouTube EDU, and much more.
Public Domain Works
Creative materials that are either no longer covered by copyright laws or are released directly by creators into the Public Domain. These works can be used freely by anyone without obtaining the creator’s permission.
Copyrighted Materials Used under the Fair Use Exception
Fair use allows for limited, socially beneficial uses of copyrighted material without seeking permission. It applies to purposes such as criticism, parody, news reporting, research, scholarship, & teaching. Fair use is determined by the purpose, nature, amount, and effect of the market of the use.
Design Credits:
Teacher-1724960 by Adrien Coquet from The Noun Project is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.
student-259870 by parkjisun from The Noun Project is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.
Library-1244000 by Thomas from The Noun Project is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.
web-2372870 by Explanaicon from The Noun Project is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.
Public Domain-511 by Public Domain Nouns from The Noun Project is Public Domain.
Scale-1352277 by Mohamed Mb from The Noun Project is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.