News and Announcements | Affordable Learning Georgia

ALG Reaches 1 Million Downloads of Open Educational Resources

Affordable Learning Georgia has surpassed 1 million downloads of full-text open educational resources — more than half of which occurred in the past year.

The materials are housed inside GALILEO Open Learning Materials, the University System of Georgia’s home for open educational resources (OER). The milestone comes just four years since the hub became available.

The top 10 downloads include a mix of textbooks and ancillary materials created by grantees and ALG’s publishing partner, the University of North Georgia Press. The top three are:

  • Educational Learning Theories, 2nd Edition, by Molly Zhou and David Brown of Dalton State College: 132,167 downloads

  • Exploring Public Speaking, 4th Edition, by Barbara Tucker and a team of grantees at Dalton State College: 97,513 downloads

  • World History: Cultures, States, and Societies to 1500, by Eugene Berger and contributing authors through the University of North Georgia Press: 92,712 downloads

Open educational resources are any teaching, learning, and research resources free to access and contain permissions to revise, remix, redistribute, retain, and reuse them. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support instruction.

Replacing the use of commercial textbooks in the classroom with OER can save students hundreds of dollars per enrolled course. To date, ALG’s grant programs, including its partnership with eCore, have saved students an estimated $82.5 million.