Bay College Students Saved Over $1,000,000 on Textbooks

News

Bay College will be celebrating Digital Learning Day 2020 to recognize the $1,108,900.00 saved to students by replacing traditional textbooks with Open Educational Resources or OER.  The celebration will take place on Thursday, February 27, from 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM (EST), in the Student Success Center (the “HUB”) on the Escanaba campus, and 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM (CST), in the lower commons area at Bay College West Campus in Iron Mountain.

OER are alternatives to publisher-provided textbooks, software, and other course materials, which are often very costly to students. OER reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. The shift to OER can save students large sums of money--potentially thousands of dollars--over the course of their college careers. Most OER are free digitally and very low-cost in print form.

Currently, over 30 Bay College courses are using OER, and 11,089 students have taken courses using OER since the fall of 2016, saving them $1,108,900.00 in textbook costs.

Digital Learning Day 2020 is open to the public. Bay College will be providing cake and ice cream, and fruit and veggies. Community members are welcome to find out more about how OER can make college more affordable for everyone. For further information about OER or Digital Learning visit our web page or Email Joseph%20Mold, Director of Online Learning.