This spring, NIU’s Course Materials Affordability Task Force (CMAT) presented the inaugural Affordable Course Materials (ACM) Department Awards. These awards are part of the task force’s Leading Impact Program, which supports and recognizes academic departments and individual faculty for their adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) and low-cost materials in courses.
In 2022, affordable course materials designators—for zero cost or low-cost ($40 or less)—were implemented in MyNIU so that students can search for and filter courses with affordable materials (defined as required books, textbooks, ebooks, streaming video, CDs, or DVDs) at the time of registration. CMAT used these course attributes to identify the departments offering the highest percentage of course sections with affordable course materials. The top three departments for the 2022-2023 academic year are:
- Departmental Achievement Award: Department of Philosophy with 73% of their courses designated as low or zero cost
- Departmental Honorable Mention: College of Business UBUS courses with 65% of their courses designated as low or zero cost
- Departmental Outstanding Effort: Department of English with 64% of their courses designated as low or zero cost
Providing affordable course materials is an important step towards student success and supporting equitable teaching practices. Dr. Robert Brinkman, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, noted, “I am so proud of the Departments of Philosophy and English for their efforts to provide affordable class materials for our students. We do our best to try to help students succeed and these departments are helping to make it so that our Huskies never quit due to not being able to afford textbooks.”
“The College of Business faculty and staff are very proud of offering UBUS courses to best arm our students with career preparation and stronger competence to succeed in their future careers. Most UBUS courses adopt ‘low cost or zero cost textbooks’ for learning and still offer superior learning by embracing many impactful experiential learning activities and practices. This award will encourage our faculty and staff further to find more innovative and transformative ‘Huskie’ business education at NIU,” said Dr. Daewoo Park, Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Student Success, College of Business.
In addition to receiving a plaque and digital badge, the ACM Department Awards come with monetary prizes funded by University Libraries. Winning departments were presented their awards at college senate meetings.
Thousands of students are already benefitting from these efforts, and these departments’ continuing commitment will mean thousands more will benefit in the future.
For more information about the ACM designators in MyNIU and the Leading Impact Program, visit the Open Education website.
