Affordable Learning Solutions Just a click away

Welcome to Affordable Learning Solutions

The CSU’s Affordable Learning Solutions Campaign is designed to enable faculty to choose and provide quality educational content that is more affordable for their students. CSU students typically pay over $800 per year for their books. By reducing their expenses, we believe we can provide better access to a quality CSU learning experience. We launched this campaign in 2010 and will be continuously improving the services to CSU faculty and students each semester.

The Affordable Learning Solutions website is designed to:

  • Make it easy for faculty, staff, and students to find no/low cost course content that can substitute for more costly textbooks
  • Enable faculty to be recognized for their efforts in reducing costs for students
  • Share practices for using no/low cost digital content in CSU courses
  • Support campuses in customizing their strategies to enable affordable learning solutions

Affordable Learning Solutions (ALS) - Rent Digital Webinar Series

The webinars provide an overview of ALS, share examples of successful campus efforts to lower the cost of course materials, and review commercial eReader tools provided by publishers and e-textbook distributors. The webinar will also address participants’ questions, comments, or concerns.

  • May 2012 (Recorded Session) (Just PPT)
    • Campus ALS Efforts and Outcomes @ CSU Dominquez Hills
    • Vendor Presentation, Café Scribe, Follett
  • June 2012 Webinar (Recorded Session) (Just PPT)
    • Campus ALS Efforts and Outcomes @ Cal Poly Pomona
    • Vendor Presentation: Cengage Learning
  • August 2012 Webinar (Recorded Session) (Just PPT)
    • Campus ALS Efforts and Outcomes @ San Jose State University
    • Vendor Presentation: CourseSmart
  • September 2012 Webinar (Recorded Session) (Just PPT)
    • Campus ALS Efforts and Outcomes @ CSU Channel Islands
    • Vendor Presentation: NOOKStudy, Barnes & Noble
  • October 2012 Webinar (Recorded Session) (Just PPT)
    • Campus ALS efforts and outcomes @ CSU Chico
    • Open and custom publication options
  • December 2012 Webinar (Recorded Session) (Just PPT)
    • Campus ALS efforts and outcomes @ CSU Northridge
    • Custom Publishing using AcademicPub
  • March 2013 (Recorded Session) (Just PPT)
    • Campus ALS efforts and outcomes at CSU Monterey Bay
    • Principles of Biology, a born digital etext from Nature Publishing Group
  • April 2013 (Recorded Session) (Just PPT)
    • CSU Library Services and ALS
    • SAGE Publishing

CSU Rent Digital, Save Lots, Learn More.

Students can save 60 percent or more when they rent digital textbooks, or e-textbooks. Faculty can choose e-textbooks for their courses from thousands of popular titles available from major publishers. When students buy the book at significant savings, they succeed. Learn more on the CSU Rent Digital Program page.

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New Digital Biology Textbook to Cost CSU Students Just $39

As part of a three-year partnership with Nature Publishing Group (NPG), publisher of the world’s leading scientific journal Nature, CSU faculty guided and advised the development of NPG’s Principles of Biology – the first in a series of interactive "born digital" textbooks. The text will be incorporated into courses for students at the Los Angeles, Northridge and Chico campuses starting in the 2011/2012 academic year.

Learn more about the Principles of Biology digital textbook.

Affordable Learning Solutions

Video by Emily Switzer,
California State University
California State Student Association

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