Immaculata University Launches Initiative for Zero-Cost Textbooks

With funding from the PA GOAL (Pennsylvania Grants for Open and Affordable Learning), Immaculata University will be using Open Educational Resources (OER) to offer zero-cost textbook alternatives. This fall, the Immaculata University Textbook Affordability Initiative is launching with ten courses that serve multiple majors and/or fulfill components of the university’s liberal arts core curriculum. As designed, students in these courses will not pay for any additional course material—all resources used will be OER or openly sourced.

“Immaculata is grateful to receive funds for the PA GOAL initiative. As we work to ensure affordability and accessibility, open educational resources support that goal. The impact of the shift to zero-cost textbooks within the ten courses will have a measurable and positive effect on students,” states Angela Tekely, Ed.D., vice president for academic affairs and provost. “In addition to affordable textbooks, this initiative creates a stronger, more complete collection of electronic educational resources that students have at their disposal both on and off campus.”

The PA Goal is funded by the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund and administered by the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc. The goal of the university is to increase the number of OER-based courses available to students by continuing to target core curriculum courses, courses required across several majors or within popular majors. These OER-based courses replace traditional textbooks with a variety of online resources, including online texts from open-source sites, web-based articles, and/or audio-visual resources in the public domain.