Steven J. Bell, Ed.D.
Associate University Librarian, Temple University Libraries
In the last issue of the Faculty Herald, I wrote about current initiatives at Temple University aimed at achieving textbook affordability for our students. That piece, “Textbook Affordability: Helping Our Students to Have a More Affordable Education”, identified the University’s Textbook Task Force as a Provost’s committee charged to identify and implement measures to advance affordable course materials. One of the committee charges relates to learning about existing faculty efforts to adopt affordable learning materials. To that end the Task Force conducted a survey in the fall of 2020 to collect information on faculty adoption of open educational resources (OER). In addition to a faculty survey, the Task Force worked with the Temple Student Government (TSG) to conduct a student survey on textbook purchasing and use behavior. This article highlights findings from both of these surveys.
Rather than surveying faculty about their general selection and use of textbooks, the Task Force survey was targeted to learn about OER adoption in particular. It is difficult to know the exact extent to which Temple faculty have already adopted an open textbook. The committee designed its initial faculty survey to provide insight into OER use across the institution. The survey was distributed to all full- and part-time instructors. For faculty respondents not yet adopting OER, the brief survey was over with a quick “no” or “does not apply to me” response to the question “Do you use OER?”. Of the total 335 responses, 90 faculty responded “yes”, 225 faculty responded “no” and 21 responded “does not apply to me”. Of those faculty who responded that they were using OER, many indicated that they were using a textbook from OpenStax, a popular publisher of high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks based at Rice University. In addition, the survey revealed that certain departments were actively using open textbooks in their introductory classes, including Chemistry, Political Science, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Psychology.
Faculty respondents could also request additional information about OER, and 156 did. In response, members of the Temple University Libraries’ subject specialist research team directly contacted each of these faculty members to both offer links to information about OER and assistance with identifying and locating OER for their course. Those faculty who responded in the affirmative were asked to provide basic information about the course in which OER was being used along with some identifying details about the specific open resources provided to students. A few of the 90 faculty who indicated they were already using OER were among those who requested additional information.
One of our Task Force members, Bavesh Bambrohlia, University Registrar, conducted an analysis of the survey data. The most salient data, according to a breakdown of the courses taught by both OER users and non-users, is the potential cost savings to our students. The faculty who responded that they used OER (n=68 after de-duplication) potentially saved their students $760,839.00 in textbook costs, whereas the faculty (n=170 where course information was available) who did not use OER potentially cost their students $1,372,574.00, assuming no zero-cost material was used in the course. These savings/costs are based on the average price of a textbook in the college store for the fall 2019 semester and the total number of students enrolled in each course taught, as identified by the faculty members in their response to the survey. Undergraduate, graduate and professional school courses were included in the analysis.
While it was rewarding to discover that quite a few faculty at Temple are already using OER to the great benefit of their students, another discovery was the apparent confusion among our faculty about what OER is. This is certainly not a phenomenon limited to Temple University. It is well recognized that instructors tend to conflate free learning materials with open learning materials. While both are free to faculty and their students, OER content provides unique permissions that allow faculty to not only use it freely, but to edit, modify or repurpose the content. Many videos and books provided freely on the internet, are still copyrighted in traditional ways that prevents any adaptation. When faculty responded that they were using OER but identified traditionally copyrighted contents such as e-books licensed by the library or a freely available web-based video, they were conflating free content with open content. This points to the need for more faculty awareness about what is and is not OER, and what permissions are granted by true OER.
On October 22, 2020, the Temple Student Government (TSG) sent a textbook purchasing and use survey to 12,500 randomly selected undergraduate and graduate students. The 31-question survey was a combination of 13 questions developed by the TSG and 18 questions from a national textbook survey conducted by the U.S. Student Public Interest Research Group. There were 633 responses. For those who responded, textbook costs are clearly a costly burden that can impede rather than support learning. In response to the question “Indicate how course materials have affected you this (fall) semester”, 41% replied that they worked extra hours at their job to afford course materials, 24% said they chose classes and sections based on the cost of the learning materials and 28% had to prioritize the purchase of access code content over other learning materials, reflecting the expense and mandatory nature of access code material. In their comments, students mentioned skipping meals, not paying a bill and even dropping a class because they could not afford the course materials. However, 35% of the respondents indicated that they were not affected by the cost of their course materials.
Given the impact of textbook costs, what are our students doing to save money on them? The top three cost saving strategies are renting, opting for the cheapest used copy and not buying at all. This student’s strategy reflects the work some go to in order to save on textbooks: “Always double check on library first. If nothing there, then local public library. If nothing there, download/pirate. If nothing there, buy from a friend/Temple student used or online used.” For many students, Temple University Libraries is a go-to resource for learning materials. They report using the Libraries reserve collections and accessing library resources embedded in their Canvas courses; 31% reported using the reserve collection at the Libraries, another 31% used library resources through a Canvas course and 30% obtained their course materials through an interlibrary loan. The impact of COVID-19 has accelerated students’ reluctance to purchase textbooks as 30% reported a member of their household losing a job, 27% reported losing their own job and 35% worked extra hours to make ends meet. When asked how they spent on textbooks for the fall 2020 semester, 10% spent more than $500, 11% spent $400-$499, 16% spent $300-$399, 23% spent $200-$299, 22% spent $100-$199 and 18% spent less than $100 (N=624).
Comments shared by students reveal some of their dissatisfaction with the ways in which assigned textbooks present challenges beyond the struggle to afford them:
· During the course of my grad program the cost of books has been a struggle for me and I appreciate that some professors get material from online sources or provide photocopies from the textbook that help reduce costs;
· Professors should be honest when telling students if the textbook is essential to their success in the course. They should use the myriad of free reading instead of expensive textbooks;
· I understand the cost of some of the textbooks but access codes for things like business courses and Tophat should not come out of the student’s pocket;
· We’re basically forced to purchase through the bookstore as the access codes bought straight from the company’s website cost more than the textbook and access code bundle alone from the bookstore;
· I don’t think it is terrible. The problem is with the educational system as a whole. The only time I felt I was spending more than I should was in a class where I spent a little over $100 to buy an access code that included an etext my professor said was unnecessary;
· I have friends and roommates in STEM majors who consistently take out greater loans to pay for their textbooks.
These two surveys provide a good starting point for generating more awareness at Temple University about the impact of textbook costs on students and the ways in which faculty, when possible, can adopt OER, zero-cost learning materials or other low-cost options. Doing so can keep our students from going deeper into educational debt, while creating a level learning platform for all students regardless of their financial status. As the pandemic continues into 2021, the economic crisis will take its toll on many Temple students and their families. In the shift to remote learning, all-digital learning content has become the standard. As most OER and zero-cost learning materials are born digital, but most with the capacity for printing on demand, it is an opportune time for all educators to consider choosing them over commercially published textbooks.
As the Textbook Task Force’s faculty OER survey shows, Temple faculty are successfully making this transition. You can hear their stories here. The Textbook Task Force will continue to share information about affordable course learning material, as well as partner with Temple Student Government to discover how our students are impacted, educationally and financially, by the cost of course materials. As Temple University looks ahead to its 150th anniversary in 2034, now is the time to imagine a future institution that excels at educating its students and is recognized globally for its use of course content that is transformative while adding little or nothing to the cost of that education. For more information about achieving textbook affordability at Temple University, contact Steven Bell, Co-Chair of the Textbook Task Force.