Affordable Educational Resource (AER): A single or collection of required educational resources that may be offered at no or low cost to a student through a post-secondary education institution or an affiliated college bookstore at a pre-sales tax cost to a student that does not exceed an amount equal to four times the federal minimum wage. AER includes copyright-protected material purchased by a library and provided to a student at no cost.

Open educational resource (OER): Teaching, learning, or research resource that is in the public domain or has been released under an intellectual property license that permits the free use, adaptation, and redistribution of the resource by any person. The term may include full course curricula, course materials, modules, textbooks, media, assessments, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques, whether digital or otherwise, used to support access to knowledge.

These outcomes represent self-reported data from LOUIS member institutions from 2012 to the present. We have made every attempt to deduplicate data provided by member institutions, OpenStax, and Inclusive Access* to provide the best and most accurate data possible. 

*While Inclusive Access savings are included here, use of these titles require costs to students that may exceed allowable costs to be designated an AER, as described in SB117 2019.