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Textbook Alternatives Project (TAP) Grant

textbook alternative project

The Meriam Library and Academic Technologies are pleased to announce the winners of a new grant opportunity for eight CSU, Chico faculty in the Textbook Alternatives Project (TAP), a part of the Chico Affordable Learning Solutions (CALS) program. The eight grant winners each will receive $600.00 or an iPad.

Congratulations go to the eight grant award winners:

Leslie Atkins, Eric Ayars, Laurie Browne, Maria DeCastro, David Kagan, Jim Mensching, Susan Roll, and Steve Stewart.
A description of their projects and their courses involved in TAP is available on this Excel spreadsheet

The primary goal of the TAP is to encourage faculty to replace their high cost commercial textbooks with free or lower cost alternatives such as open educational resources (OER), library resources, digital textbooks, or self-authored materials, while also maintaining or improving the quality of student learning.

Participants in the grant program will meet on January 23, 2013 and monthly throughout the spring semester 2013, where they will be introduced to a variety of textbook alternative choices and will have the support of librarians and instructional technology staff in developing alternative textbook solutions to be used in fall, 2013 semester.

Click here for a full timeline of the project

Click here for a list of project Librarians and ITCs



Download the Grant Opportunity Flier here.

The Application and MOU for the project are available below:

Application Application

MOU Memorandum of Understanding

Information that was required for the application

  • The course name, number, and average number of students.
  • Current textbook used for the course and its cost.
  • An essay describing your plan to replace your current textbook with a low cost alternative for the Fall, 2013 semester.
  • The total savings to students.
  • How the use of alternate learning resources will meet the guidelines for fair use of copyright protected materials and accessibility.

Deliverables

  • A written report evaluating the project submitted at the end of the semester.
  • Become part of a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) that will collaborate and share ideas with one another and later with the campus community at the annual CELT Conference 2013.
  • Use of free or lower cost alternative learning resources.

Selection Criteria

  • Quality of application and how well it meets the requirements above.
  • Potential savings to students.

Not Eligible

  1. Commercial e-textbooks of existing print textbooks, although use of e-components or e-chapters is allowed.
  2. Textbook rentals. However, use of components also is permitted for rental of e-textbooks.
  3. Faculty already using textbook alternatives.

Open Educational Resources (OER) 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 re-purposing by others (Atkins, Brown, Hammond (2007).