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Textbook Alternatives Dashboard

This dashboard tracks the use of affordable textbook alternatives in Drake courses. These alternatives include Open Educational Resources (OER), Open Access (OA) books, and Affordable Educational Resources (AER). We define AER as eBooks purchased by Cowles Library on behalf of instructors for students to use at no charge. In all but a few cases, these eBooks can be used by an unlimited number of users at the same time.

If you are a Drake instructor using these types of resources in your classes, please contact the library's OER Team so we can add you to our growing database.

Read more about the benefits of using open resources, and learn more about finding OER for your courses, at the OER section of our website.

Resources Offered, by Term

These data represent the number of unique textbook alternatives offered across all courses in a term. We only count a resource once per course, per term, even if the course offered multiple sections during that term.

Students Impacted, by Term

These data represent the total number of students enrolled in courses that used a textbook alternative. If a course had multiple sections, all sections are represented here. If a lecture course had associated lab sections, we only count the lecture section enrollment.

These data do not account for students who may have opted to purchase a textbook anyway, as some instructors do provide that option.

Student Costs Offset, by Term

Not every textbook alternative represented in this dashboard replaced a commercial equivalent. We only include data for the cost of the previously used textbook when that information is available to us.

The offset shown here is potential offset, as students in some courses have the option of purchasing the textbook if they wish, and some do. Again, this information is not always available to us.

The price we use is the eTextbook Rental, Used Purchase, or New Purchase price, in that order. That is, if there is no eTextbook Rental option, we reflect the Used price, etc.

Instructors and Resources, by College/School

 

Search the OER Textbook Database

Instructor Course Term Resource Type