Highlighting Affordability in the Schedule of Classes: Course Notes

If you teach courses using no-cost or low-cost materials, please use or ask your course schedulers to use the standardized codes for your course sections. Below are the CourseLeaf/People Soft codes and the text of the notes as it will appear in the course schedules:

• 0282: This section uses zero-cost course materials/textbooks ($0)

• 0283: This section uses low-cost course materials/textbooks (under $50)

   

If you are looking for open or affordable course materials, including library eBooks, suitable to replace commercial materials in your class, please visit Finding OER, email lidiya.grote@louisville.edu, or schedule a consultation with the UofL  Affordable Learning Coordinator.

The University of Louisville Libraries developed and approved an Affordable Learning and Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative in 2023 to advance student success, improve retention rates, and increase educational opportunities across various demographic groups. 

In Fall 2023, the Affordable Learning and OER Workgroup focused on developing, implementing, and promoting zero-cost and low-cost course notes, the use of which was piloted in Spring 2024, and the results have been impressive:

• 147 class sections across over 20 programs are using zero-cost and no-cost course notes;
   

  Discipline/ Program	Number of Course Sections	Number of Students
  Anthropology (ANTH)	6	122
  Bioethics	3	2
  Business	2	25
  Communications	8	107
  Entrepreneurship	3	38
  History	6	120
  Humanities	18	358
  Law	6	187
  Liberal Studies	2	38
  Linguistics	2	5
  Master of Business Administration	6	144
  Microbiology and Immunology	7	29
  Management	7	202
  Marketing	6	63
  Social Work (MSSW)	1	18
  Pan-African Studies	2	15
  Philosophy	29	524
  Public Health (PHMS, PHPB, PHPH)	11	114
  Physiology (PHZB)	3	32
  Sociology (SOC)	9	149
  Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies	10	106
  Totals	147	2398

• cumulative student savings are over $206,000 (a calculation based on the average cost of textbooks in 2023, which was $105.37 according to the Education Data Initiative)
   

The Affordable Learning and OER Workgroup (ALOW) looks forward to the continuation and expansion of the use of zero-cost and low-cost course materials noted in Summer and Fall 2024 and subsequent semesters and years.