Biology eAcademy: Principles of Biology

Extracted from file:LA2-NSRW-1-0230.jpg Brown bear sketch from scaned textbook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Affordable Learning Solutions, Principles of Biology, Nature. This is a commercial online textbook that is low cost. http://als.csuprojects.org. Each part of the textbook is an online module that has images, video, learning objects, built in quizzes, and links to articles. They have expanded the test banks and have applied levels from Bloom's taxonomy. You need to go through the publisher to get access.

ALS Goals
Make it easy for faculty, staff, and students to find no/low cost course content that can substitute for more costly textbooks

The chancellor's office if funding efforts for low or no cost textbook solutions.

Many instructors do not know that college librarys may already have free etext copies of textbooks for students.

We also looked at MERLOT http://www.merlot.org  - they have gone through a refresh. The site was updated this year.

Textbooks are getting more expensive - the Biology textbooks are basically huge reference books. The online textbook was actually created completely online - it is not a

Nature was founded in 1869 - Scientific American was founded in 1845. They have 70+ journals in the life, physical, and clinical sciences. Their package includes Scitable. the CSU piloted this with 17,000 users.

Affordability - 39.50
Customizability
All in one solution
Student Success and Retention
Value

The technology landscape is changing - this is accessible to computers, tablets, and phones. This textbook built from the ground up as a digital work. The partnered with faculty from the beginning as a teaching tool by CSU faculty members.
Digital textbook sales are increasing

An instructor in the room said that she used it and it was not ready.

A majority of the CSU students were not buying any textbook because the Campbell book was too expensive. The faculty would rather work around the quality issues than deal with the high price of textbooks.

It will link to Moodle with its assessments.