By Molly Ledermann & Joyce Hommel, Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, MI
Faculty should be able to communicate required textbook information to their students whether or not there is a cost for the book. Students should be able to know when signing up for a class if they have a required textbook and whether or not there is a cost for the book.
As we’ve seen in ongoing CCCOER conversations, institutions across the country have been struggling to ensure that OER textbook information is communicated effectively and course markings clearly indicate which courses use OER and have no book costs.
We began to wonder about the sheer size and scope of this issue and decided to see if we could capture an informal snapshot of institutions experiencing this problem.
We sent a Google survey out across the CCCOER, Sparc OER, and Michigan OER listservs to answer the following question: Are you experiencing difficulties with your institution’s ability to communicate and display free OER course materials via your campus bookstore course material adoption system?
67 individual institutions from across the country responded, including 30 four-year institutions and 37 two-year institutions. 54% said Yes. 19% said No. 27% said Other.
Of the 27% that indicated “other,” 68% of those respondents listed a specific problem, which brought the total percentage of institutions experiencing this problem up to 73%. “Other” examples included:
- bookstore software limitations
- inability to list specific OER course materials
- bookstores listing OER as no materials required
- bookstores mixing OER in with for-cost textbooks
- inability to provide links to OER textbooks
- faculty awareness of workaround solutions.
This survey suggests that the issue of communicating free OER course materials to students is not unique to one institution or to institutions of a specific size.
Sharing this information at our own institution has been helpful in showing that we are not a lone voice on this issue as we work towards solutions that are in the best interest of our students.