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Driven by a mission to increase access and reduce the cost of higher education for Ohio State students, the Affordable Learning Exchange (ALX) has used a multi-pronged approach to support faculty who wish to explore affordable alternatives to expensive textbooks and course materials. Our initiatives strive to support open pedagogy and an OER-based learning community.

Our Impact

$47M in direct savings for students from 2016-2023Since 2016, ALX has reduced the cost of learning materials for Ohio State students by over $47M by supporting faculty who create and adopt open educational resources, undergo affordable course redesign and through deep discounts on publisher textbooks. Learn more about the Faculty Grants program and the CarmenBooks initiative at Ohio State.

Faculty Grants

172 Projects

Projects involved using open textbooks, writing new content, creating lending libraries, and incorporating racial justice components.

141 Participants

Participants included faculty members, lecturers, GTAs, instructional support staff and more, and represented 43 colleges or departments.

$21 million

in direct savings from grant projects.

CarmenBooks

489 Courses

These courses took advantage of discounted digital textbooks and publisher homework systems.

439K Titles

A title is an individual copy of a digital textbook or singular access to a homework system.

$26 million

in direct savings from CarmenBooks.