Affordable Learning Materials

Follett Discover Tool & NAU Bookstore

Follett has partnered with the NAU Bookstore to provide a robust resource for faculty to submit their course adoptions in a timely manner.

Why is this important?

Bottom line, the more used materials the bookstore can acquire early on, the bigger the savings for the students. The NAU bookstore combs the highly completive used textbook market to acquire as many used books as possible.  More time spent in the market means more acquisition success, which translates to more choices for our students.

Additionally, if course materials identified for future terms and there is a need for additional inventory, the bookstore pays the student 50% of the current retail price of their textbooks. If an adoption isn’t received, the student would only receive the wholesalers National Demand pricing or nothing at all.  This is a significant difference and can drastically affect the overall cost of course materials for a student.

Open Educational Resources (OER)

In the broadest sense, OER addresses equity issues in higher education and provides access to quality educational materials. The high cost of traditional educational materials may present a barrier to student success within the academic institution. Therefore, it is important that faculty have access to resources that support the exploration of quality OER for their students.

What are OER?

“Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.” — Hewlett Foundation

What OER resources does NAU’s Cline Library provide?

• A robust guide and experts to help faculty discover quality OER.
• Additional resources for affordable and/or free educational materials for students at NAU, through Course Reserves.

What are some additional resources for OER?

• NAU’s Instructional Designers in the Teaching and Learning Center (part of Faculty Professional Development) can provide guidance and resources to effectively implement changes in course materials.
• There are a handful of organizations that support “hubs” of OER information, including:
  • EDUCAUSE – a nonprofit association that helps higher education elevate the impact of IT…working to tackle challenges and leverage opportunities that are constantly evolving within higher education.
  • Hewlett Foundation -a nonpartisan, private charitable foundation that advances ideas and supports institutions to promote a better world…support[ing] efforts to advance education for all, preserve the environment, improve lives and livelihoods in developing countries, promote the health and economic well-being of women, support vibrant performing arts, strengthen Bay Area communities and make the philanthropy sector more effective.
  • Lumen – Their mission is to enable unprecedented learning for all students…by providing affordable course materials designed to strengthen learning using OER…Lumen’s OER course materials are engineered to improve subject mastery, course completion and retention.
  • Merlot – provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.

Student Textbook Exchange

Coming Soon for Fall 2020!