Indiana
State University is dangling an incentive in front of its faculty to get them
to switch from traditional course materials—which students must buy on their
own—to open materials that are completely free to students.
Any
professor who moves their classes to no-charge reading lists will receive a
$3,000 stipend from the school, according to the Indianapolis Star. The stipend is intended to compensate the
instructor for the time and effort spent finding, organizing, and/or creating
the free materials.
The program
is part of a pilot intended to help students save money on course materials.
With “more than a dozen” instructors participating in the first year, the
university estimated about 700 students saved approximately $90,000 in textbook
expenses.
“The
ultimate goal, of course, is to make college more affordable for students and
also, hopefully, in doing that make them more successful in their college
career,” said Heather Rayl, an emerging technology librarian at Indiana State.
More
colleges and universities are encouraging faculty to seek out free or cheaper
course materials. Some campuses have signed on with nonprofit repositories to
help provide faculty with vetted sources for materials.
