Affordable Learning Georgia: Affordable Materials Grants Round 29: Transformation Grant

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
Transformation Grants support individual instructors, teams of instructors, and entire departments, along with supporting professional staff, in replacing their existing commercial textbooks and materials in a specific course with no- or low-cost-to-students learning materials. These materials can include the following:
Adoption, adaptation, and/or creation of Open Educational Resources (OER), such as open textbooks and ancillary materials.Note: We define ancillary materials as any materials created to support substantially the instruction of a course using an existing open educational resource(s).Adoption of library materials available in GALILEO and University System of Georgia (USG) libraries at no additional cost to students.Adoption of no-cost materials outside of OER, such as freely available websites and multimedia.Adoption of low-cost materials, not exceeding $40.00 total per student.
Note: in STEM courses with required laboratory manuals, grant teams are allowed to propose to replace either the commercial lab manual component or the commercial textbook component of a course. Please be specific about the process, student savings, and costs within the application. Reviewers are looking for the highest-impact projects, and it is preferable to replace both of these components within one project.