As thousands of students settle in on college campuses in New Hampshire, they will be facing a sometimes unexpected expense: Textbooks. Lots of big, costly, mandatory textbooks. Or maybe not. “Our goal is not to get to 100% lower-cost or no-cost materials in every class … sometimes it’s not possible. But in those big gateway courses that everybody takes – Intro to Sociology, Computing 101, Psychology 101 – there’s no reason students should be spending $250 on a textbook,” said Jennifer Cournoyer, Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs at River Valley Community College in Claremont. Cournoyer has been spearheading an initiative launched by the state community college system known as OER (this is education, so you’ve got to have an acronym). It stands for Open Education Resources, with “open” in the sense of open software.
https://www.concordmonitor.com/open-resource-college-textbook-materials-27565703
