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SCALE - For Faculty

The PAL Award at a glance

211 instructors from 31 institutions have received the PAL Award.

Over 275 courses have been transformed, impacting over 57k students.

Switching to no or low-cost materials has resulted in an estimated $6.7 Million in costs savings for students.


Professor for Affordable Learning (PAL) Award

Over the past decade, the cost of textbooks has increased at four times the rate of inflation, causing financial hardships for students and contributing to lower academic performance. The use of open and affordable educational resources can lower student costs and improve outcomes by ensuring all students have access to the course materials they need to be successful.   

The Professor for Affordable Learning (PAL) award recognizes professors who have integrated affordable learning into their classrooms by choosing no-cost or low-cost course materials. 

If you’ve helped your students by adopting no-cost or low-cost course materials, we’d like to recognize and thank you! We invite you to apply for the Professor for Affordable Learning Award.

Course materials must meet the criteria below to be considered no-cost or low-cost. 

No-cost materials = $0 per student

Examples include: 

  • Open Educational Resources (OER), such as open textbooks and ancillary materials

  • Library licensed materials available for use at no additional cost to students

  • No-cost materials outside of OER, such as freely available websites and multimedia

Low-cost materials = $1 - $50 per student

Examples include: 

  • Required course materials such as workbooks, lab manuals, online homework platforms and codes or publisher-provided curricular material, not exceeding $50.00 total per student
     

Applications are now open! Students may complete the application to nominate a professor for the award or professors may complete the application to nominate themselves.

Apply here for the Professor for Affordable Learning (PAL) Award

This award is sponsored by the Partnership for Academic Libraries of South Carolina (PASCAL). For more information, please contact Amy Trepal at Amy.Trepal@pascalsc.org.  

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