Purchase/Rent Required Materials

Required Course Materials

If your course requires material's that are not automatically charged through your student account or hosted in Redshelf then you will need to purchase or rent those required materials from a source of your choosing.

You can view whether you will need to Purchase or Rent Required material in your Student Portal in the Course Materials tab. The Resource Type will show Purchase/Rent and that indicates that you will need to acquire the material outside of CSU-Global.

There are several sources that you can purchase or rent required materials for courses from. We have listed a few below but do not feel limited to these if you prefer somewhere different. Just ensure that the ISBN is matches what is in Course Materials.

  • MBS Direct - If you use a book voucher or receive a Pell Grant you will want to use this online bookstore as they can accept book vouchers.
  • Redshelf or Vitalsource - These are both eBook rental/purchase sites that provide instance access upon payment. Rentals can range from 90 days to over a year.
  • Chegg, textbooks.com, or Barnes and Noble - These are textbook specific retailers that can sometimes have better stock of textbooks. We would recommend that you compare shop when looking for a physical copy.
  • Amazon - Since Amazon is a massive marketplace it is always advised that you double check that the ISBN of the book you are ordering matches the one in  Course Materials. Also ensure that the book you are ordering is not the international edition. International Editions can sometimes share ISBN's but will have different material inside.

Free Open Resource Textbooks

Sometimes Required Materials can be found inexpensively or free on Open Source sites. Not all publishers utilize these resources but it is always worth checking. Below you can find some Open Resource sites.