The University of Illinois System universities (Urbana-Champaign, Chicago, Springfield) strive to address the widely recognized problem that the costs of textbooks and associated learning materials have challenged college affordability for many students and their families. One way the UI System universities address the problem is through exploring ways to design, create, and implement open-source materials for use in college courses. Open educational resources are freely accessible, openly licensed text, media, and other digital materials that are useful for teaching, learning and assessing as well as for research purposes. The efforts build on the universities' quality faculty and rich history in the utilization of technology in teaching, research and dissemination of knowledge.
