Dear friends,

We are two and a half weeks into our campaign and thanks to you we have raised over $1,100 (plus a $500 pledge) to fund creation of Freely Available Textbooks & Learning Materials!

We are so excited and so grateful for your financial support!

We've also fulfilled some major milestones in terms of awareness. We were featured in the VT Daily News and on WDBJ7 TV last week. 

Will you take a moment and share these update with others who might care and benefit from this initiative -- and ask them to give today? Every donation matters!

Are you wondering about the real impact of these types of works? We find the impacts to be very exciting! Since we started this campaign, our very first open textbook Fundamentals of Business has gone from just above 80,000 downloads to 90,000 downloads.  Your contributions help us to do even more.

This campaign fits well into the national conversation around course materials (see the April 14th Washington Post article).

We still have a ways to go before May 10th. Please take a moment to forward/Tweet/Facebook this message to  others who have not yet donated -- and ask them to give today.  

Thank you for your support, 

Anita (and the team)

Anita R. Walz

Open Education, Copyright & Scholarly Communications Librarian

University Libraries, Virginia Tech,  Blacksburg, Virginia USA

In case you're wondering, here's a more detailed campaign explanation: 

    We are crowdfunding to raise awareness and to fund a grant program which supports faculty experiencing content-related problems in their courses. These include: a lack of course materials for a particular topic, course materials that don't fit learning objectives or are too expensive that students cannot afford to buy and keep them, or a lack of support to develop or adapt innovative course materials (videos, texts, virtual reality, to name a few) which aid student learning. 

   These materials are developed by student-faculty teams, faculty teams, or by individual faculty in consultation with a team of teaching, learning, technology, and publishing specialists. Course materials developed as part of faculty-led projects are openly licensed and customizable, freely shared with students, and with the world as part of Virginia Tech's land grant mission. Sharing these materials with an open license makes them customizable for others and allows them to be used and repurposed in innovative ways not yet imagined.

     These resources not only solve instructional problems and more deeply engage those who create/adapt them; they reduce overall student learning costs and level the playing field for students who otherwise might otherwise choose to go without.