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PALNI Affordable Education Initiative: Overview

PALNI Affordable Education Initiative

Welcome to the PALNI Affordable Education Initiative (AEI) Guide. This Guide was developed by the AEI Task Force to help promote ideas, tools, and partnerships that can help lower the cost of higher education for students. 

Affordable Education Initiative vs. Open Education Resources

What is the difference between AEI and OER? The Affordable Education Initiative includes any resource that can reduce the cost to the student, but may not be an Open Education resource. What's the difference? 

Open Education Resources

Open Educational Resources (OER) are "teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others."  

From The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

OER materials are released under an open license granting permission for every one to:

  • Retain -- users have the right to make, archive, and own copies of the content
  • Reuse -- content can be reused in its unaltered form
  • Revise -- content can be adapted, adjusted, modified, and altered
  • Remix -- original or revised content can be combined with other content to create something new
  • Redistribute -- copies of the content can be shared with others in its original, revised or remixed form.

OER include digital learning materials such as:

  • open textbooks
  • full courses
  • modules
  • syllabi
  • lectures
  • homework assignments
  • quizzes
  • lab activities
  • games
  • simulations

Affordable Education materials can include OER, but also supplemental resources, library resources, and many others!

More OER Information

Attribution

Creative Commons License
Lansing Community College (LCC) Library Research Guide on Open Educational Resources (OER) by Regina Gong is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Modified and adapted by the PALNI Affordable Education Initiative Taskforce.