Students at institutions of higher education are spending millions of dollars per semester on textbooks. This financial burden is having a negative impact on student success. By promoting the use of free course materials, the open educational resources (OER) movement provides a way to greatly reduce textbook costs, while also offering an opportunity for academic innovation. Since the OER movement is still in its early stages, with modest investment summer sessions have an opportunity to take leadership roles on their campuses by beginning OER initiatives. In addition to helping students reduce educational costs and thereby improve their success, OER initiatives can be effective marketing tools by providing very positive press. Furthermore, the OER initiatives can increase summer sessions' reputation as a leader in academic innovation on campus. In this paper, we explain OER, its potential benefits for summer sessions, and a strategy for implementing OER.

Keywords

college costs · management · College textbooks · educational innovations · free material · summer schools