International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 131

Collaborative Partnerships between State Agencies and Institutions of Higher Education
and the Alabama Community College
System (ACCS). The workshop brought
together speakers and researchers from
the national and local OER movement,
who educated students, faculty, and
staff from state institutions about the
many aspects of OER. Project 2: ACHE/
ACCS Open Educational Resources
Grant resulted in the creation and publication
of the first open textbook published
on the newly formed Alabama
OER Commons.
The textbook, Composing Ourselves
and Our World: A Guide to First-
Year Writing, was created by Auburn
University at Montgomery as part of the
grant program. Along with its partner
institutions, Bishop State Community
College and the University of South Alabama,
a reported 4,148 students in English
1010 and 1020 saved an estimated
$386,841 off the cost of textbooks as a
result of the project. A reported 1,102
students saved an estimated average of
$88.45 each in English 1010, for a total
of $97,471. A group of 3,046 had an
average savings of $95.00 for English
1020, for a total of $289,370.
Project 1: OER Statewide
Workshops
In the State of Alabama, student loan
debt has long been a topic of intense
discussion. As a result, Auburn University
at Montgomery, a four-year regional
school in the central part of the
state, began working on ways to reduce
the costs of textbooks for their students
in early 2017. The impetus to reduce education
expenses came when students
questioned the cost of a required accounting
textbook. In response, Auburn
University at Montgomery created the
Required Reading Cost Committee, an
ad hoc Faculty Senate Committee dedicated
to evaluating options that faculty
members could use to reduce the high
costs of required textbooks. One of the
many affordability options discussed by
the committee involved OER materials.
At the same time Auburn University
at Montgomery was forming
their committee, the Alabama Commission
on Higher Education hired a
new executive director, Dr. Jim Purcell.
A native of Alabama, Dr. Purcell
obtained degrees from three separate
universities within the state, and was
thus uniquely familiar with many of the
issues facing higher education in Alabama.
As a result, he was quick to announce
efforts to combat the high cost
of education via cost-saving measures
such as the Free Application for Federal
Student Aid (FAFSA) Completion
Project and the use of OER materials
(Alabama Commission on Higher Education,
2018a). Not only did ACHE implement
the OER program, it showed
commitment to OER initiatives by adding
them to its strategic plan. According
to the ACHE’s 2017-2018 annual report,
the program “will help to replace
expensive, commercial print textbooks
with free digital learning tools for general
education courses that have high
enrollments” (Alabama Commission
on Higher Education, 2018b, p. 3). The
projected outcome of the program was
a cost savings of more than $2,000,000
that would affect over 18,000 students
(Alabama Commission on Higher Education,
2018b). Moreover, to ensure
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