Featured Open Educational Resource: The Legal and Ethical Environment of Business
Congratulations to Dr. Susan Willey, Dr. Zoe Salloom, and Emerson Stewart. This team received an Affordable Learning Georgia Textbook Transformation Award for creating an outstanding free e-textbook for the course, BUSA 2106: The Legal and Ethical Environment of Business.
The textbook is divided into twelve modules covering all of the necessary topics for the course including ethics, dispute resolution, contracts, torts, product liability, and more. The textbook is freely available here.
According to the final report for the ALG Textbook Transformation Grant, students in BUSA 2106 previously paid between $75 and $250 for the textbook depending on whether they could rent it, find the hardcover copy or find it online. With the creation of the free e-textbook, students in the Fall 2015 classes saved collectively from $12,900 to more than $40,000. The benefits of the free e-textbook doesn’t end with financial cost savings for students. In Fall 2015, students in the sections of the course using the free e-textbook outperformed students with the same class structure in the sections of the course using the high-cost traditional textbook. Additionally, the DFW rates for students using the free e-textbook were significantly lower than those using the high-cost traditional textbook.
Here’s what students have to say about the free e-textbook for BUSA 2106: The Legal and Ethical Environment of Business:
“I liked the e-book because it helped me save money at the beginning of the semester and is always accessible. I think that being able to explore videos was more effective because I would only watch the videos in the subjects I was weak on.”
“I like the fact that the e-book is so simple and clean cut. I also loved the fact that it was free. In addition to that, the videos were really helpful, which is something we wouldn’t be able to receive with a regular textbook.”
Find out more about the BUSA 2106 project in this report. Read about all of the Affordable Learning Georgia Textbook transformation projects here.