Andrea Diaz
Reporter
A group of students and faculty from all of Idaho State University campuses have come together and are trying to spread awareness of Open Educational Resources (OER). OER are learning materials that are not under traditional copyright, and are available online for free or at a very low cost. These resources could include free textbooks from publishers such as OpenStax, course materials in OER repositories online or even professors’ own written materials.
The committee is known as the Open and Affordable Educational Resources (OAER). “Starting this past year, in 2020, the library became aware of recent research on open educational resources, or free and openly licensed course materials, showing that they could really benefit ISU students. So we formed a committee called the OAER committee, Open and Affordable Educational Resources Committee,” said Health Sciences librarian, Kristin Whitman.
To recognize faculty members adopting OER at ISU, the OAER committee created the Textbook Heroes honor. “Textbook Heroes are members of the ISU community who have created or adopted low cost or free course materials, meaning low cost or free textbooks, lab manuals, study manuals,” Whitman said. The OAER also presented their campaign to different people around the campus and have professors and faculty that have already adopted OER into their courses, which include:Mark Mcbeth, Political Science, Amy Jo, Popa in Art, Marie Stango in History, Iris Buder in Economics, Sarah Robey in History, Zackery Heern in History, Cathy Gray in the library and Lydia Wilkes in English.
Something that initiated the campaign as a whole was the statistics that came from a Florida study that outlined due to the pricing of textbooks and materials for a course that 64.2% of students have not purchased the required book for a course, 42.8% took fewer classes, 40.5% didn’t register for specific courses, 35.6% received a poor grade, 22.9% dropped the course completely. It was also discovered that Courses with OER had a 29% lower withdrawal rate than courses with commercial textbooks.
One of the ways that the committee raised awareness was they held ISU Open Education Week (Feb. 22-26), which included a series of virtual events for faculty interested in adopting OER in their own courses. They also urged students to come forward about how the pricing of textbooks have affected them and their education by creating a series of video interviews. These student stories can be found on Idaho State University’s Library Youtube channel in the Textbook Tales playlist.
In a particular Youtube video on the Textbook Tales playlist, the students are asked what is the most expensive textbook they have purchased and oftentimes it was where they had to purchase an access code along with the textbook in order to have access to the homework. “And the particular one I bought was one of those leaflet textbooks. So that already feels silly, because why am I paying so much for leaflets? And, and then it came with its own code. And so you know, once you log into the code, and you use it, that’s not refundable. But also because it’s a leaflet and not a real actual book, you can’t resell those or anything, and you can’t return them,” said senator for the College of Arts and Letters, Pam Pascali.
With alternative options of materials at possibly lower costs the OAER hopes that this will increase the diversity and amount of students that attend ISU. Some students, such as lower income or first generation students, may be discouraged by the high price of materials required for certain courses, thus with alternative materials it creates more options for students.
The OAER Committee hopes to continue to raise awareness around campus, and they plan to work with campus groups such as the ASISU student government. “I mean, progress is happening. we’re adopting a resolution of support to give to the administration that, you know, is just emphasizing how important open and affordable educational resources are for students. And then what that means for retention,” Pascali said.
