Nicole Allen is the Student Public Interest Research Groups (Student PIRGs) Textbook Advocate and director of the Make Textbooks Affordable project. Since 2007, she has worked with students, faculty and decision-makers across the country to address the rapidly rising cost of college textbooks through grassroots organizing, public education and advocacy.

Open Educational Resources and Solving the Textbook Cost Crisis

This session will cover the following:

• An introduction to open educational resources (OER) and its roots in the "broken" textbook market
• Examples of OER being implemented on campus, online and in public policy
• Insight into how to begin advocating for OER, and how it may enhance Open Access advocacy

Part two of talk continue here.

Dr. McGowan earned his Doctorate in Cardiovascular Physiology at Temple University School of Medicine. While at Temple, he served as a member of the Heart Failure and Transplant Teams at Temple University Hospital and participated in nearly 500 human heart transplant and LVAD-placement operations. Dr. McGowan completed Post-doctoral Fellowships in Cardiothoracic Surgery Research at the Medical University of South Carolina and in Translational Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. For nearly a decade, Dr. McGowan served as Director for a graduate course in Medical Physiology at Arcadia University in Glenside, PA.

Dr. McGowan has served in various positions of leadership at HealthAnswers, Inc.; Acumentis, LLC.; Cephalon; Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and most recently Pfizer, Inc. Dr. McGowan is a member of the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions; served as Founding Chair of the Alliance’s Emerging Technologies in Education Committee.

For the past decade Dr. McGowan has conducted research and lectured both nationally and internationally on the need to drive innovation in healthcare. He is currently consulting with start-up companies, medical societies, patient advocacy groups, and academic medical centers committed to accelerate quality improvement through technology and information flow.

Dr. McGowan has just completed his first book, “#SocialQI: Simple Solutions to Improve Your Healthcare” to be released by No Limit Publishing in the late summer/early fall. You can follow him on twitter (@BrianSMcGowan) or by subscribing to his blog www.SOCIALQI.com.