The Affordable Learning Summit is an opportunity for librarians, faculty, and others to collaborate on building a network dedicated to making higher education more accessible and affordable.

The theme of this year’s summit is Advocate PA: Getting the Word Out about OER. A variety of presentations, panels, lightning talks, and keynotes are scheduled over six different days to provide several opportunities to learn about OER advocacy, engaging student governments, OER in a post-COVID world, and more. Our keynote speakers for this year feature Nicole Allen, SPARC Director of Open Education (September 9), Jasmine Roberts, The Ohio State University (September 23), and Daniel Williamson, Managing Director of OpenStax (September 25).

The ALPA Summit is generously funded through the Affordable Learning PA project, administered by PALCI and coordinated by a Steering Committee including representatives from Temple University, Penn State University, Bloomsburg University, Pennsylvania Highlands Community College, the Commonwealth Libraries of Pennsylvania, and PALCI staff.

The long-term goal of the project is to support a robust OER community among our campuses for the active creation and use of open textbooks and related educational resources. Affordable Learning PA is a grant-funded project made possible in part of Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funds from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, Department of Education, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Wolf, Governor.