By Megan Dempsey
Raritan Valley Community College has been offering faculty mini-grants for converting courses to zero-textbook costs since May, 2018. The Evelyn S. Field Library has been spearheading this initiative, advocating for the creation of the OER Steering Committee, working with the RVCC Foundation to seek donor funding for faculty mini-grants, providing professional development and assistance with finding OER, and managing data collection for the initiative. As of December, 2019, this program has realized $455,486.50 in student textbook savings. Enrollments and annual savings can be viewed on our Student Savings data dashboard. Savings data for the current spring semester will be collected soon, and we anticipate total savings to approach close to $1 million with the cumulative savings of courses that have already converted and the addition of new courses each semester.
Our approach to textbook affordability has been broad and flexible, rather than strictly OER adoption. Faculty converting to z-courses use a combination of openly licensed educational materials and copyrighted “free-to-student" materials. In addition, some courses run every section using free course materials while other courses only have z-sections taught by specific faculty. For example, three faculty teaching Introduction to Business collaborated on a grant-funded project to adopt the open textbook Fundamentals of Business from Virginia Tech and create all of the supplemental materials (including Alexa skills) that were needed to support a large number of adjunct faculty teaching the course. On the other hand, Introduction to Literature is taught by several different faculty in the English department, some of whom have curated resources to run it as a z-course, others who prefer to continue using a traditional anthology or who supplement free resources with a couple of inexpensive literary texts (a paperback novel, for example).
We are also promoting “low-cost” courses for which materials total less than $45. These include courses like Introduction to Poetry, which uses a text that runs anywhere from $20 used/rented to $40 new, and General Chemistry I & II, which use OpenStax Chemistry: Atoms First supplemented by Knewton access for $44 for two semesters. Giving faculty the flexibility to choose the best method for making their course materials free or low-cost has enabled us to continue to expand our affordability efforts beyond the initial early-adopters of OER. (However, we do not consider publisher inclusive access models to be part of our z-course initiative.)
To engage faculty who have not yet participated in an OER workshop, the Instructional Services Librarian (who chairs the OER Steering Committee) offered a professional development workshop, “Breaking the Textbook Barrier: Why and How to Convert to a Z-course." She had attended the VALE Open Textbook Network trainings last year, and this workshop was modeled after the OTN Faculty Workshop. After the workshop, faculty who attended were invited to submit a review of a textbook from the Open Textbook Library and upon completion, they received a $200 stipend. 21 faculty members registered for the workshop, 17 attended, 14 wrote a textbook review, 3 indicated they would adopt an open textbook, and 12 said they would maybe adopt.
The workshop was offered on March 2nd and within weeks, RVCC was fully remote in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, two more faculty members have contacted the Instructional Services Librarian to share that they will be adopting an open textbook for either the summer or fall semester. The librarians have been overwhelmed by the number of students contacting us through LibChat or email to ask how they can get access to their course readings now that the library is closed and they cannot use our reserve textbooks. Although faculty (and students) were initially taking emergency measures to move their courses online quickly, now that we know summer courses will also be online, faculty can take a more systematic approach to planning how to deliver effective remote instruction. Open textbooks and other free-to-student resources – those that will continue to be available to students long after the current crisis has passed – can be actively and thoughtfully integrated into new online course offerings.
The library is also promoting open resources during the closure of our physical campus by finding virtual labs that can be used to run lab science courses online. A list of online resources for virtual labs was shared with the Science & Engineering department chair for consideration as the faculty determine if and how they can offer these courses in an online environment.
One of our biggest challenges is communicating to students that we offer z-courses. We have not been able to implement a z-course designation in the student registration system, so currently the only list of z-courses and low-cost courses is maintained by the library. To assist students with the registration process, we added the My list of z-courses and low-cost courses form to the page that lists these courses. Students can read through the lists and then create a customized list of the ones they are considering taking. By completing the form, they receive an email with the courses they selected, which can then be referred to during the registration process. This is particularly useful for courses where only specific faculty are running z-sections. We are promoting the list of courses and the My list tool through email and the college app. Faculty who are already teaching z-courses also promote the list and the existence of other z-courses to their students.
As this “new normal” slowly and inevitably influences what we consider to be the norm in education, open educational resources may see spikes in adoption and visibility. Students who have experienced the accessibility, off-line capabilities, and other benefits of OER are going to expect such qualities from future course materials. Librarians who are promoting OER should capitalize on what may be a new realization for many faculty that their students are not purchasing textbooks. Although we may need to be creative about how we are reaching faculty without face-to-face opportunities, now is a great time to start or continue conversations about OER.
Megan Dempsey is the Instructional Services Librarian at the Evelyn S. Field Library at Raritan Valley Community College. She can be reached at Megan.Dempsey@raritanval.edu.