Affordable Learning is a priority at SF State. Through Open Educational resources (OER) and Affordable Instructional Materials (AIM), faculty can make their courses more affordable and equitable.
Academic Technology, The Leonard Library, the DPRC, and the SFSU Bookstore support faculty in replacing costly textbooks with lower cost alternatives by using high-quality open educational resources (OER), library resources, digital or customized textbooks, and faculty-authored materials. Every dollar counts for many students.
2024-2025 Highlights
"The COVID-19 pandemic made it clear that students were not all in the same place financially, so it was easy to cut costs by removing the required textbook purchase and switching to an open-source textbook for Bio 210 (lecture). For the lab class, having to teach online via Zoom made it necessary to develop our own teaching materials. OpenStax was an easy option to choose for Bio 210, as it had all of the background material students needed for the course. For Bio 211 (the lab course), I wrote up the materials myself and we could easily edit and change them as needed each semester, as we went from online to hybrid to face-to-face learning. I believe they have benefited students’ learning because I am able to tailor what I post on Canvas to fit their needs instead of having to be chained to a textbook and the publisher’s materials. I believe that students are learning as much as they did prior to these changes. Interestingly, in the lecture course, it seems as though more students actually did better after the change, and this may be due to having more low-stakes online assignments (homework, quizzes) compared to pre-COVID-19 semesters. Teaching online during the pandemic resulted in reshaping Bio 210 to have fewer high stakes exams, and more regular low-stakes formative assessments that I created. This trend continued even after we returned to face-to-face instruction. Note the increase in “Bs” and decrease in “Cs” in the Spring 2024 semester. For the Bio 211 lab class, there was no real difference in grades pre-/post implementation. A sample lab section is included in the excel sheet. The ease of having students fill out lab worksheets electronically has been appreciated by both students and instructors, and has allowed us to give students more feedback on each lab in a timely fashion. Students were very enthusiastic about not having to buy a textbook and appreciated ALL of the many resources available and posted for them on our class Canvas site. In the lab class, students appreciate not having to buy a lab coat (we lend them out) or lab manual."
"I want this course to be accessible and not a financial burden on students who already have so many expenses related to attending college.
The main cost for students is a textbook which I was able to replace with carefully chosen academic articles that at accessible to students for free through the library.
I think it has reduced the financial burden of attending college but also builds trust between me as an instructor and the students.
Students know that we use articles, videos, tiktoks and many other sources to learn from. So changing to a broad modality has led students to share related material with me and the class as they come across it in their everyday life.
Everyone had a really positive attitude and was very eager to learn and engage with the material. Something that surprised me was learning about different cultural approaches and how they differ from what i am used to. I recommend engaging as much as possible. I see myself using my knowledge for when i have my own kids one day and raise them."
"In the past we noticed multiple students who were very slow to enroll in the online homework system or never did. This greatly impacted their performance in the course not only for homework but also exams. With the more affordable materials we noticed students were more likely to sign up and engage with the system early allowing them the opportunity to complete the homework on-time and be more prepared for exams.
As we made the shift to teaching general chemistry in a studio-style we thought lowering the cost to students would be beneficial and so it was implemented as a design goal, as part of this larger shift in teaching style.
By adoption of these more affordable materials, and continuing to work with the publisher to lower the cost even further for Fall 2025 we will now be able to have students purchase a workbook that contains all of the class activity and laboratory instructions and notesheets along with integration of pages that replace their laboratory notebooks. We anticipate having all of these materials in one place for students to access will provide a benefit for their learning, especially their ability to use these materials later when reviewing, while keeping the cost stable for students.
During Fall 2024 in Chem 215 (second semester general chemistry) the students enrolled in the course had experienced the previous online homework system during the first semester and then the new homework system in Fall 2024. Overall the feedback from students was very positive, sharing that the new homework system was much easier to complete and they liked the homework sets selected. From the SETE responses it was stated that “I liked the homework part, I did really like it. I feel like [the new homework system] and the way this course gave the homework was way better than how [the old system] works”. Some other comments shared during the final unit of the course, when asked about their experience with the new system are provided below:
o “Homework is good for practice on Achieve since it also gives you hints which are useful to take note of”
o “Its good practice getting ready for the quiz”
o “They hit all the topics needed without feeling like an overwhelming workload”
o “[the new homework system] is a lot better than [the old homework system]”
o “Definitely better than [the old homework system]”
2023-2024 Highlights
"I was not satisfied with a single text available and wrote my own lecture notes combining topics from multiple texts and articles. Over time I enhanced my lecture notes, created computer lab exercises (vignettes), and built assessments within LMS... consisting of dozens of quizzes and hundreds of questions...In addition to being zero costs, my instructional materials are posted online (https://www.mbarecon.com/teaching/econ-715-mathematical-economics), and accessible to anyone with access to the internet. This enables students to prepare in advance before the course starts (I have designated materials for that), as well as review the material after the course has ended and after graduation, e.g., for their Ph.D. courses. My instructional materials are also used by other instructors, and my lecture notes are getting cited, so the benefits of my instructional materials extend far beyond my students and beyond my course...Students who are pursuing a Ph.D. program often send me messages that my materials are helpful with their Ph.D. courses, which they take long after graduating from SF State."
"Students had been complaining about the cost of STATA. In making the new course I decided to use R instead of STATA which meant I had to use a software that I was less familiar with to save the students money. STATA is much more user friendly than RStudio. The learning curve for R is quite high and that was frustrating for some students. Other students who intended to do data analysis for work (not just the class) appreciated the support in learning the free program."
"I distinctly remember my own student days and the struggle around buying textbooks. I had a hard time paying for new texts and would always be on the hunt for buying used copies. This would mean that I already had a late start to the class. Learning from my own struggles, I was motivated to keep the cost down for course materials. (For Affordable Instructional Materials) I used a publisher called Macmillan Learning. I developed a great relationship with the relationship manager there and over time learned more about their affordable offerings. I then decided to team up with another colleague to adopt their materials. This also gave us more bargaining power in negotiations. This strategy worked as we were able to drive the cost down significantly while giving students top quality materials. The affordable materials come in a bundle which include podcasts, adaptive learning assessments, work it out video quizzes and clicker programs (for attendance and polling questions). Given the variety of platforms, students could access and learn the material in many different formats. Often times during class discussions, students would reference a quote from the text or an example from the podcasts. This was a good sign of material retention and student engagement with the material. My classes are geared mostly towards first year students. Since the materials were affordable and accessible (via Inclusive Access), students had the opportunity to engage and learn the material from day 1. They could also sign up for a 2 week free trial which further ensured that they were staying on top of assessments/activities. Students felt in control of their education budget. They were not pressured to pay up front in order to learn and be part of the class. They had options for payment too. They could either pay the negotiated price of $60 via the publisher directly or spread it out via their financial aid (Inclusive Access program)."