The Impact of Affordable Learning Open Textbook on Computing Education

As part of the Affordable Learning Georgia’s (ALG) Textbook Transformation Grants, this project aims to develop open text course material for a Java Programming Course (Programming Fundamentals). This initiative also targets other schools that may benefit from the course material developed and replace their current traditional textbooks with a free textbook as well as with more affordable and flexible digital learning sources customized to the needs of students. In this poster, we will share how we evaluated currently available open source materials, targeting the subject by using student reviews, student pre-post surveys, faculty surveys, and analytics. We will present how we decided whether to utilize these sources. This project had a major impact on students’ learning processes. All students registering for the course have access to a free up-to-date textbook and to additional affordable, supportive instructional materials. This access is expected to lead to improved student academic performance in the targeted courses and to improve student knowledge retention.