Textbook costs have long been a concern for students, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated that problem. U.S. PIRG found that 65% of students skipped buying a required textbook due to cost. A survey conducted by Temple Student Government in 2020 showed that in order to afford a textbook, 41% have worked extra hours at their job, and 14% have skipped meals.
Tell us your textbook affordability story for a chance to win a personal study room for a whole day during final exams! Submit a true story about the most money you spent on textbooks in one semester. In a paragraph, audio/video clip, graphic design, or some photos, briefly share how this expense impacted you and what that money would have gone towards if you didn’t have to pay for textbooks.
Five winners will be randomly selected from all entries. Winners may select their date and library location (Charles Library or Ginsburg Library). The study room must be used M–F, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, May 2–May 5 or on May 8.
Happy Open Education Week! During this week, we celebrate and advocate for open educational resources. Open educational resources (also called OER) are defined by SPARC as “teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, which also carry legal permission for open use.” These are teaching and learning materials — like videos, slide decks, podcasts, worksheets, and textbooks — that are free to access, use, share, and modify in the digital environment without copyright concerns because their creators have given others permission to do so.
Why are open educational resources so important? For students, their biggest appeal is they are zero or low cost. Open textbooks can save students hundreds of dollars each semester. For faculty, OER offer an opportunity to craft course materials that are highly relevant, current, and meaningful for their discipline. In addition to remixing and modifying existing materials, faculty can create new materials or textbooks.
To learn more about why Temple faculty are driven to author an open textbook, we spoke with Dr. Carmelo A. Galati, Associate Professor of Instruction and the Co-Director of the Italian Studies Program at Temple University. Dr. Galati is the author a new open textbook, Gratis!: A Flipped-Classroom and Active Learning Approach to Italian, which is currently under review with North Broad Press. This textbook is intended for students with no previous knowledge of Italian.
Why did you choose to write Gratis!: A Flipped-Classroom and Active Learning Approach to Italian as an open textbook?
While leading a session on active learning for teachers of Italian at a professional workshop under the jurisdiction of the General Consulate of Italy in Philadelphia and the Italian Ministry of Education (October 2019), my colleague, Dr. Cristina Gragnani, and I discovered university students are not the only ones affected by the high and growing cost of language textbooks. High school programs are also facing issues and are unable to provide students with affordable educational tools to promote the Italian language and culture. Temple University’s Italian Studies program’s work within the Philadelphia community to disseminate Italian culture dates to the early 20th century. In support of that pioneering work educating students and promoting Italian culture, we created an open-access, introductory-level Italian textbook for Temple University students, as well as high school students in the greater Philadelphia area and beyond. Doing so makes foreign language study accessible to all and places Temple University at the forefront of internationalization at the secondary education and university levels.
Tell us about the process of publishing this textbook with North Broad Press, the joint open access imprint of the Libraries and Temple University Press.
Prior to Gratis! I did not have experience in textbook publications, as most of my writing projects dealt with peer-reviewed academic journals and edited volumes. Thanks to the guidance of Annie Johnson (former Assistant Director for Open Publishing Initiatives and Scholarly Communications), Mary Rose Muccie (Director, Temple University Press), and Alicia Pucci (Scholarly Communications Associate), the process has been a positive and rewarding experience. From the very first day of being contracted to author Gratis! everyone at North Broad Press has been very supportive and has shown great enthusiasm for the project. Whenever questions arose regarding copyright, formatting, use of videos, or anything in between, they were quick to respond by email and to schedule video conferences with me should I need further clarification.
You chose a Creative Commons license for your textbook. Were you familiar with Creative Commons prior to this project?
I was not familiar with Creative Commons (CC) prior to the project. As a language textbook, Gratis! is filled with lots of images to introduce, reinforce understanding of, and assess vocabulary knowledge of each lesson and unit. Creative Commons has made the inclusion of images much less stressful since I did not need to purchase individual licenses for the book’s photographs. Furthermore, in choosing a CC license for Gratis!, instructors who wish to adopt it are free to add more material. This may include new integrated grammar or vocabulary exercises that align with the context of each chapter. The CC license allows instructors to choose cultural reading materials to assess reading comprehension as well, since educators can write and add additional reading content to the book.
You received an OER Development Grant from the PA GOAL program. Did this impact how you envision faculty and students using this textbook?
The OER Development Grant supported the development of videos, images, and interactive H5P exercises that serve as ancillary materials and provide students with instant feedback. The grant provided funding for four undergraduate Italian majors (Aidan Giordano, Andrew Raker, Julia Rudy and Eileen Scanlan), studying at our Temple University Rome campus, working with two Italian faculty members and the Director of Student Activities (Daniela Curioso, Bruno Montefusco, and Gianni Marangio, respectively), to create original video content for each of the textbook’s chapters. The students’ contributions allow language learners to experience studying abroad virtually through videos that document their travels around Rome, provide a virtual campus tour of Villa Caproni (the building which houses the Temple Rome campus along the banks of the Tiber River), and record interviews with local Italian university students discussing differences between the American and Italian Educational system.
Thanks to the OER Development Grant, Gratis! emulates the leading publishers in providing students with competencies that they will acquire by the completion of each chapter. Units include specific vocabulary that integrates grammar and culture lessons, while online ancillary materials provide students with additional support and instant feedback.
All the unique videos, images, and H5P exercises that appear in Gratis! can be found in TUScholarShare’s Teaching and Learning Materials collection for download and reuse.
What advice would you offer faculty who might be considering authoring an open textbook?
If you are looking for a way to provide affordable educational tools for students and the opportunity to continuously reflect on and update best practices and initiatives to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, then authoring an open textbook is the way to go! Most Italian language textbooks contain microaggressions that endorse heteronormative culture and behaviors, promote traditional family planning, and ultimately present a false picture of the world in which we live. In writing Gratis! I have been able to represent diverse realities for Italian-language learners and to make the learning process inclusive to all! Gratis! does not promote stereotypes of traditionally conservative Italians. Instead, it teaches inclusive vocabulary regarding the LGBTQIA+ community. It presents students with language regarding places of worship for all faiths, not just Roman Catholicism. In its goal to represent Italy’s diverse realities, Gratis! depicts Italians of all cultures, races, and religions.
Temple University Libraries is celebrating Open Education Week from February 27 to March 3, 2023. Open Education Week is an annual celebration designed to raise awareness about open educational resources and practices.
What are Open Educational Resources and Practices?
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are free to read and reuse. Examples of OER include videos, images, lab activities, homework assignments, and textbooks. Open educational practices — also known as open pedagogy — use OER to support learning and invite students to be active participants in the teaching and learning environment, engaging in knowledge creation and sharing.
Faculty who use OER instead of a commercial textbook can help save students hundreds of dollars a semester. Faculty who use OER can revise, remix, and build upon the content created by others, customizing the material to meet the needs of their particular class. This can aid in bringing about a more culturally responsive teaching and learning experience.
Open Education Week Events & Activities
To mark Open Education Week, Temple University Libraries will be offering the following events and activities:
Contest for Students
Tell Us Your Textbook Affordability Story Submit a true story about the most money you spent on textbooks in one semester. In a paragraph, audio/video clip, graphic design, or some photos, briefly share how this expense impacted you and what that money would have gone towards if you didn’t have to pay for textbooks.
You can win a day’s reservation to a study room in Charles Library or Ginsburg Library during final exams! Five winners will be randomly selected from all entries. Deadline to submit: March 17, 2023.
Event for Faculty
Waffle OPEN House Our featured faculty event is a tasty one! You’ve heard of Waffle House. Join us on Wednesday, March 1 at Charles Library for Waffle OPEN House.
Come to Suite 375 in Charles Library between 10:00 am and 12:00 pm for waffles, pancakes, coffee, and more – along with informal discussions with our librarians about open education practices and how to incorporate them into your instructional practice.
Online Workshops
Textbook Affordability Project Application Information Session Monday, February 27, 2023 | 12 pm |Register Join us as we discuss the TAP grant award opportunities, application process, requirements, and answer any of your application questions.
Using Open Educational Resources in the Classroom Tuesday, February 28, 2023 | 12 pm | Register In this workshop aimed at faculty and teaching graduate students, we will provide an introduction to the world of open educational resources. We’ll discuss how to find high quality OER in your discipline and show you how these materials can be customized to suit the needs of your particular class and improve student success.
Copyright and Creative Commons Tuesday, February 28, 2023 | 1 pm | Register Join us as we cover the basics of Creative Commons licenses—what they are, how to find CC-licensed material, and how to license your own work.
Sharing Your Teaching and Learning Materials with TUScholarShare Wednesday, March 1, 2023 | 1 pm |Register Temple’s institutional repository, TUScholarShare, provides free online access to textbooks, syllabi, slide decks, tutorials, videos and more created by faculty and staff. In this workshop, you will learn about the benefits of sharing your materials and how to make them open and freely available online to teachers and learners beyond Temple.
How to Promote Your Open Scholarship Thursday, March 2, 2023 | 12 pm | Register This workshop will cover strategies how faculty can promote for promoting their open scholarship. This will cover building a scholarly profile, where to store your work, how to showcase your work on social media, and how to express this hard work in the promotion and tenure process.
Accepting Applications for the Textbook Affordability Project Grant!
Open Education Week is also a great time to learn more about Temple University Libraries’ Textbook Affordability Project, which provides grants ranging from $500 to $1,500 to faculty who adopt, adapt, or create free alternatives to commercial educational resources. Engaging in open educational practices, like replacing a traditional assignment with a renewable assignment, is also an option. Applications are being accepted until April 7, 2023.
We hope you will join us for our Open Education Week events!
Did you know that each semester the Libraries provides a list of textbooks and other course readings that are available as ebooks? The list is based on information Temple faculty provide to the campus bookstore. These materials are free for Temple students. Use the drop-down menu to find your course and see if your etextbook is on the list!
The Libraries are not always able to purchase ebooks, as many textbook publishers do not make their titles available to libraries electronically. When a book is available to us, we prefer to purchase a multi-user license for something we know will be used in a class, though we will buy a single-user license if that is the only option.
Since 2017, Temple University Libraries has been purchasing ebook copies of course texts whenever possible. In the 2021-22 academic year, the Libraries offered electronic access to 32% of course texts, saving students an estimated $450,000.
This week is Open Access Week, a yearly international celebration that aims to increase awareness about open access. Most academic work is locked up behind a paywall, available only to those who are affiliated with a college or university. Open access scholarship is completely free to read and reuse. Help us celebrate by showing your support for OA on social media or by attending one of our events.
Caroline Burkholder is the Sustainability Manager for Temple University’s Office of Sustainability. She is responsible for developing sustainability programming throughout the university, coordinating outreach and capacity building activities with students, faculty, and staff, providing support for new sustainability initiatives on campus, and assisting in the completion of institution-wide sustainability reporting. Burkholder recently spoke with Scholarly Communications Associate Alicia Pucci to discuss her work and how open can support climate justice and sustainability at Temple and beyond.
Help us to understand this year’s theme, Open for Climate Justice. What is climate justice and what should people know about it?
Climate justice is both a term and a movement centering equity in the application of sustainability principles in policy and practice. Climate justice recognizes that the social, material, and health impacts of a changing climate will be felt differently by different populations and will disproportionately impact poor and historically underrepresented and resource-deprived communities.
Unsurprisingly, people living in developing countries produce fewer emissions per capita than those in the major polluting countries while bearing the brunt of the consequences with less power and fewer resources for mitigation and relief.
This disparity in experience is not naturally occurring but rather the conclusion of a racist and colonial extractive global economic system. Climate justice focuses its attention on the structural contributors to crisis, understanding climate change will exacerbate existing inequality and social action is necessary to demand restorative justice and correct past wrongs to ensure future prosperity.
What role does open play in your work with Temple’s Office of Sustainability?
The Office of Sustainability was founded to achieve Temple’s Presidential Climate Commitment – climate neutrality by 2050 – by greening the physical plant and decarbonizing campus operations; integrating sustainability principles into coursework, teaching, co-curricular activities and campus life; and facilitating research and resources to educate on critical issues of climate change and environmental justice.
As Philadelphia’s only 4-year public university, an urban institution that is deeply engaged in the community, we recognize the Temple University’s commitment to sustainability can have a profound impact on the health and quality of life of a large and diverse population within Temple and its surrounding community and the Philadelphia overall.
Open access and the availability of knowledge and resources is essential for solving pressing urban sustainability challenges, especially here in our own neighborhood. Our office engages with other sustainability professionals both inside and outside the academy, in city and state government, and across the region, country and globe to share best practices and strategize to reach our shared goal of decreasing emissions and building resiliency in communities, especially those who need it most.
An open and equitable exchange of ideas in climate action yields a diverse collection of data: climate action plan goals, various institutional reports, greenhouse gas inventories, waste audits, faculty and student research, student tools for community organizing and advocacy, engagement, campaign and event strategy documents, maps of sustainable features and amenities on campus, and more.
Temple has a detailed climate action plan. Are there any open tools or practices you hope to adopt to enable climate research and data?
Temple University’s Climate Action Plan and its goals were mandated by President Ann Weaver Hart signing onto Second Nature’s American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). Among other foundational actions like setting target dates and calculating our carbon footprint, the ACUPCC commitment requires the university to make the action plan, inventory, and progress reports publicly available, underscoring the value of open access. The visibility of data and progress to goal reports is essential for all university stakeholders to ensure accountability for action, especially for those goals concerning equity.
Another key function of the Climate Action Plan document is to increase awareness of Temple’s sustainability initiatives and programs. When faculty and other university leadership understand what we’re doing on campus and how they can take part, they can translate the local climate action work at all levels of Temple administration, and within different academic disciplines, into community engaged research and experiential and service learning which increases access to research and data and promotes climate justice.
The 2019 Climate Action Plan had the following goal:
Create an online repository for existing and future sustainability exercises and course material to assist faculty in integrating sustainability into their courses by June 2020.
In 2022, in accordance with the research goals outlined in the 2019 Climate Action Plan, the Office of Sustainability, together with Temple University Libraries, established the Climate Change, Sustainability and Environmental Justice Collection for TUScholarShare.
The collection is a repository for articles, teaching and learning materials, data sets, research, books, and working papers related to climate change, sustainability, and environmental justice authored by researchers, staff, and students at Temple University. It features practitioners’ documents, namely, case studies and tools authored by sustainability officers and other institutional stakeholders as well as faculty, graduate and undergraduate research.
By recognizing, incentivizing and connecting the faculty community, the repository facilitates a institution-wide development of a transdisciplinary sustainability science research agenda that integrates discovery and solutions-based research.
This open access repository creates support for sustainability research, tools, and resources by not only connecting sustainability scholars and practitioners within Temple community but also by connecting the work of the Temple community to the broader local and global coalition of climate advocates by sharing knowledge and collaboratively building a just climate future for Philadelphia and beyond.
Enter for a chance to win a day of a reserved study room during final exams!
Using your preferred medium (text, video, audio, photos, or designed graphic), tell a true story of a professor who saved you money by using free course materials or textbooks. What was the course? Who was the professor? How did that impact your learning in the class or your savings outside of it?
Five winners will be randomly selected from all entries. Winners may select their date and library location (Charles Library or Ginsburg Library). The study room must be used M–F, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, April 26–April 29 or on May 2.
Temple University Libraries is celebrating Open Education Week from March 7-11, 2022. Open Education Week is an annual celebration designed to raise awareness about open educational resources and practices.
What are Open Educational Resources and Practices?
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are free to read and reuse. Examples of OER include videos, images, lab activities, homework assignments, and textbooks. Open educational practices — also known as open pedagogy — use OER to support learning and invite students to be active participants in the teaching and learning environment, engaging in knowledge creation and sharing.
Faculty across Temple’s schools and colleges are using OER in their classes. Faculty often assign OER in order to make their course materials more affordable for students. By choosing an open textbook instead of a commercial textbook, faculty can save students hundreds of dollars a semester.
Another benefit for faculty is that OER are openly licensed, which means that faculty can revise, remix, and build upon the content created by others, customizing the material to meet the needs of their particular class. This can aid in bringing about a more culturally responsive teaching and learning experience.
There are many tools available to help identify OER, like the Open Textbook Library and OER Commons. Temple faculty can also use Temple’s Open and Affordable Learning Materials Inventory to see which faculty members are already using OER and other zero-cost learning materials in place of traditional commercial textbooks as well as obtain suggestions for affordable learning materials to adopt. Only Temple faculty/staff can view the Inventory; it is not available to the general public.
Open Education Week Events & Activities
To mark Open Education Week, Temple University Libraries will be offering the following virtual activities:
Contest
Tell Your Affordable Textbook Story Submit a story about a time when a professor saved you money in a course. You can win a day’s reservation to a study room in Charles Library or Ginsburg Library during final exams! Deadline to submit: March 18, 2022.
Accepting Applications for the Textbook Affordability Project Grant!
Open Education Week is also a great time to learn more about Temple University Libraries’ Textbook Affordability Project, which provides grants ranging from $500 to $1,500 to faculty for adopting, adapting, or creating free alternatives to commercial educational resources, in addition to exploring open educational practices. Applications are being accepted until April 8, 2022.
We hope you will join us for our Open Education Week events!
The Libraries recently launched the Center for Scholarly Communication & Open Publishing (SCOP). SCOP’s initiatives and events support open publishing across the Temple community and provide opportunities for faculty and students to come together to discuss and shape the future of scholarly communication. SCOP’s core initiatives include TUScholarShare, Temple’s institutional repository; North Broad Press, our joint Libraries/Press imprint; the open journal publishing program; and the Open Access Publishing Fund.
We’re pleased to announce that Julia Scheffler is SCOP’s first Graduate Student Ambassador. Scheffler specifically supports the institutional repository, TUScholarShare. We spoke with Scheffler to learn more about her background and her work for the Libraries.
What brought you to Temple? I grew up just under two hours away in Kutztown, PA and have frequently visited Philadelphia. My mentor from undergrad is a graduate of Klein College, and after researching the faculty here it felt like the perfect fit for me. I initially planned to come to Temple for my undergraduate study, but I just wrapped up my first semester of the Media Studies & Production Master’s program! I took a few years off of school after receiving my B.A., but was eager to return to academia and connect with the faculty here at Temple to fully utilize all of the resources this campus has to offer.
What do you hope to do after you graduate? I hope to pursue my PhD in Communication and Media Studies while also working in the creative media industry. My current research focuses on the discursive use of memes and aesthetics online to establish digital communities and political subcultures. Ideally I would like to connect my passion for research and writing with my creative outlets of art, music, and fashion. I am still in the process of honing in on a specific area within the broad field of communication and media.
Can you tell us a little bit about your work at the Libraries? Working at Temple Libraries really opened my eyes to the vast amounts of research coming from Temple across all disciplines. I really enjoy browsing the abstracts of articles from departments that I do not regularly interact with in my own studies. Most of my time with TUScholarShare is spent reviewing research done by current and former faculty, validating and organizing metadata for our institutional repository, and confirming copyright status for published works.
What has surprised you the most about this work? I was surprised to learn so much about the multitude of Creative Commons licenses an author may have for their work, and how researchers go through the publication process. I don’t have much experience working with copyright, so it has been interesting to learn about author’s rights in regards to distribution of their own work. It has also shown me how many layers of review articles must go through before we are able to access them as students.
What has TUScholarShare taught you about scholarly publishing? I have learned the value of open access publishing for both students and authors alike. Without the institutional access provided by Temple, a majority of these published works are behind paywalls that limit the public’s access to that research.
If there’s one thing you could tell faculty and graduate students about TUScholarShare, what would it be? I would strongly encourage other graduate students to utilize TUScholarShare for their own independent research and assignments! We are really fortunate to have renowned faculty that have been published many times, and it is a great way to dive deeper into a research area you may have connected with a professor on. Also, it never hurts to cite your own professor in your writing. I would also encourage faculty, especially those that may be new to Temple, to connect with us and have their publications deposited to our repository. This is an accessible way to share your work with the Temple community and share your experience with the students here.
This week isOpen Access Week, a yearly international celebration that aims to increase awareness about open access. Most academic work is locked up behind a paywall, available only to those who are affiliated with a college or university. Open access (OA) scholarship is completely free to read and reuse. Help us celebrate by showing your support for OA on social media or by attending one of our events.
Professor Jules Epstein is the Edward D. Ohlbaum Professor of Law and Director of Advocacy Programs at Temple University Beasley School of Law. He teaches advocacy, criminal law, and evidence courses and is the co-author of an Evidence course book used at other law schools. He recently publishedCollective Wisdom: One Bit of Advice with NITA. Epstein also works with the Temple trial team students, teaching ‘advanced evidence’ and working with individual students on their evidence, analytical and advocacy skills. Professor Epstein is an advocate for assigning free and low-cost resources to students in his classes to lower the overall debt incurred while attending law school. Epstein recently spoke with Director of the Law Library Michelle Cosby about these efforts.
Tell us about the Integrated Trial Advocacy Program (ITAP) and what open access or free resources you use or assign to your students.
The ITAP program integrates the teaching of courtroom skills with two substantive topics – the Law of Evidence (Fall) and Civil Procedure II (Spring). For Evidence the free resources I provide are:
A complete evidence textbook that I have authored and make available in chapters class by class across the semester.
A free copy of the federal rules of evidence.
A study guide that I authored.
Evidence “decision trees” that I created.
A mock case file that we use to test our understanding of the evidence rules by applying them to a case file.
Has your work in trial advocacy had a role in your decision to use these resources?
Yes it has. Based on trial experience, I can select the cases and examples that best illustrate the rules the students will rely on and how they are applied. As well, I know from litigation experience that a law school textbook has little or no utility once in practice, and what students need instead are the *statutory* Rules themselves.
What advice would you give to other faculty members looking to move away from traditional textbooks in their courses?
Unless the textbook you assign has exemplary materials for every point you teach, find the cases and other sources that do. Take a year to gather your materials and begin creating a document with case excerpts, hypotheticals, sample transcripts, etc. Once you have them in a Word doc or similar format, it is easy to update.
Are there any free resources, tools, or technologies being used in trial advocacy?
The web is filled with examples of case transcripts, lectures, video clips from courtroom proceedings, recordings from mock trial competitions, and blog posts. [For the last, see, e.g.,https://www2.law.temple.edu/aer/advocacy/ ] Similarly, Zoom and other technologies permit recording and review of student performances.
Is there anything else you wanted to share?
My final statement is an equitable one: Our students spend an enormous amount of money on their education, and if we can reduce these costs while ensuring quality education, we should.
Congratulations to all of Temple’s recent graduates! The Library is proud to host our graduate students’ outstanding research in Temple’s new institutional repository, TUScholarShare.
We received 107 dissertations and 57 masters theses this May. Of those, only 13% of students chose to embargo their work. This means that the vast majority of these important publications are freely available for the public to read right now.
In addition, 67 authors included their ORCID iD. We recommend that all Temple faculty and graduate students register for an ORCID iD in order to distinguish themselves from other researchers.
Graduates of the doctoral program in Educational Administration deposited the most dissertations (10), followed by Business Administration/ Finance (8), Physics (8), and Business Administration/ Strategic Management (6). Graduates of the MA Program in Urban Bioethics deposited the most masters theses (22), followed by History (4), Music Performance (4), and Oral Biology (4).
Medical ethics, urban bioethics, business administration, management, education, computer science, higher education, and physics were some of the top subjects written about by Temple students who graduated in May.
Several students wrote about the COVID-19 pandemic. Titles include:
