Affordable Learning Georgia: Affordable Materials Grants Round 29: Continuous Improvement Grants

Purpose
Affordable Learning Georgia is a GALILEO initiative to reduce the cost of course materials for students. For more about Affordable Learning Georgia, see our Mission and Values page. For data and more information about how these programs have affected USG students, visit the Our Impact page.
The implementation of no-cost and low-cost materials in place of a commercial textbook has been found to be an effective practice, either raising student performance or keeping it the same while reducing the cost of course materials to students. To this end, Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG)’s Affordable Materials Grants are intended to:
Explore and expand course materials transformation to include the adoption, adaptation, and creation of OER; the adoption of materials available through GALILEO and University System of Georgia (USG) libraries; and the use of other no-cost and low-cost materials.Provide support and time to faculty instructors, librarians, instructional designers, and other professional staff to meet, plan, review, and implement these approaches.Work toward access for all, lowering materials costs for students and contributing to their retention, progression, and graduation.
Examples of qualifying Affordable Materials Grants projects include:
Adopting an open textbook and creating new ancillary materials to support the adoption.Adapting and revising existing OER and then adopting these new materials in place of commercial materials.Authoring a new open textbook to adopt in place of a commercial textbook when there are no OER to cover the subject.Adopting library materials in place of expensive materials when there are no OER to cover the subject.Adopting low-cost software and/or textbooks to ensure total required resource costs for students are under $40.00.Affordable Learning Georgia has also added a category of Research Grants to explore research questions related to teaching and learning with affordable and open learning materials.
Affordable Learning Georgia has also added a category of Research Grants to explore research questions related to teaching and learning with affordable and open learning materials.
Overview
Continuous Improvement Grants support projects that increase the sustainability of open educational resources through the creation of new open materials, the revision of existing open materials, and new research regarding the use of open materials in instruction.
Continuous Improvement Creation and Revision Projects include:

• Revision of OER used in existing courses Creation of ancillaries for existing OER courses Replacement of current OER in courses with new/improved OER

For the purposes of this grant, we define a substantial improvement and/or adaptation as the major adaptation and/or improvement of a resource through updates for accuracy, accessibility, clarity, design, and formatting.