Online Learning Update

Steven Bell, EDUCAUSE Review

The current turn of events points to the future demise of print textbook reserves. It should spur librarians and their faculty colleagues to imagine higher education with fully digital e-reserves and a commitment to born-digital, zero- or low-cost learning materials that all students can equitably afford to access. We should adopt Open Educational Resources (OER) to the fullest extent possible. Together, let us learn from this COVID-19 experience and move forward by eliminating our fragile dependence on course content that commercial publishers refuse to make available to libraries in digital format. Any sustainable future for affordable and accessible digital learning materials must come from within the academy.

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2021/1/farewell-print-textbook-reserves-a-covid-19-change-to-embrace

Senator Dick Durbin

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) today announced that the University of Illinois (U of I) System has been awarded $1.08 million from the U.S. Department of Education’s Open Textbooks Pilot Program – a competitive grant program based on Durbin’s Affordable College Textbook Act.  The funding will support the creation and expand the use of open college textbooks – textbooks that are available under an open license, allowing professors, students, researchers, and others to freely access the materials.  The University of Illinois System is one of nine grant recipients nationwide selected for Fiscal Year 2021. Later this month, Durbin will be leading a group of Senators in requesting an additional $25 million for the program in Fiscal Year 2022 to support additional grants and savings for students.

https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/university-of-illinois-system-awarded-1-million-open-textbook-pilot-grant

LilyTodorinovaaZara T.Wilkinson, Journal of Academic Librarianship

This survey assessed the experiences of faculty who participated in a textbook affordability program at Rutgers University. The program provided incentive awards in exchange for replacing commercial textbooks with affordable course materials such as open educational resources (OER), self-developed course materials, course reserves, or library-licensed content. The survey collected faculty’s perceptions about the award program, experiences with OER, and interest in open textbook authoring. Responses suggest that the program is well received and that funds are adequate for adopting new course materials. However, they also indicate that even participating faculty vary greatly in their knowledge and use of OER and their interest in authoring open textbooks. Ultimately, these survey results indicate the lack of a “one size fits all” approach to incentivizing the adoption of affordable course materials, the use of OER, and the creation of new open resources.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0099133320301117

Emma Whitford, Inside Higher Ed

Average student spending on textbooks and course materials continued to decline in the fall of 2020, while the number of units purchased or rented increased, according to data the research firm Student Monitor released today. On average, students spent $186 each on textbooks and course materials this fall, down from $199 in fall 2019. “During the fall semester of 2020, distance learning drove widespread adoption of less expensive eTextbooks in both sales and rentals — including through subscription models — leading to a 7 percent decline in spending as compared to the same period last year,” Eric Weil, managing partner at Student Monitor, said in a statement.

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/11/05/student-textbook-spending-continues-decline

GARY MICHELSON AND HAL PLOTKIN, EdSource

Would you pay for a textbook when you could get a better one for free? The answer coming from many college administrators might surprise you. By embracing a new “embedded in tuition” textbook-pricing scheme and ignoring the benefits of getting textbooks through a freely accessible digital library, many college administrators are burdening students with unnecessary costs while also sacrificing an opportunity for tech-enabled collaborative innovations. But there is a much less expensive alternative. Open educational resources are teaching and learning resources that reside in the public domain or are released with an intellectual property license that allows their free use and, often, re-purposing as well as continuous improvement with thousands of educators around the globe contributing to their content.

https://edsource.org/2020/transform-higher-education-make-textbooks-free/641561

Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
A pilot at the University of Phoenix found that a well-designed interactive textbook can help people stick with their math studies. The university worked with zyBooks from John Wiley & Sons in a two-course undergraduate sequence on quantitative reasoning. The pilot began in October 2019 and was transitioned into full implementation beginning in December 2019. The adoption involved 800-plus adult learners with an average age in the mid-30s.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2020/09/21/u-phoenix-e-textbook-pilot-improves-adult-math-engagement.aspx

Matt Badessa, Rutgers Today

The program incentivizes Rutgers faculty to use free or low-cost learning materials that save students money. More faculty than ever before are participating in a program through the Rutgers University Libraries to provide open and affordable textbooks for the fall. The initiative is estimated to be able to save over 16,400 students a total of more than $2.1 million in the cost of textbooks and other course materials over the next year. The Open and Affordable Textbooks (OAT) program, administered by the libraries, provides $1,000 awards to Rutgers faculty who modify their courses to use free or low-cost learning materials instead of traditional textbooks. To date, it has brought an estimated savings of over $5.7 million to students universitywide.

https://www.rutgers.edu/news/open-and-affordable-textbooks-program-reduces-textbook-costs-students

Jeffrey R. Young and Rebecca Koenig, EdSurge

These arrangements, often called “inclusive access” programs, tend to stir up controversy—and sometimes even lawsuits—when colleges adopt them. On this episode of the EdSurge Podcast, we examine why that is. We discuss the changing economics of textbook publishing, analyze who benefits most from bulk book deals, and take a closer look at a new textbook subscription program at the University of California at Davis, hearing from both an excited administrator and a skeptical student.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-07-28-why-it-s-so-hard-to-lower-the-cost-of-textbooks

Robert Farrington, Forbes

While the textbook industry would obviously hate for that to happen, the realities of pursuing higher education in the midst of a pandemic might bring this change regardless. Like it or not, students attending school virtually don’t have a lot of incentive to purchase a big, bulky textbook when most of their materials are presented online. With that in mind, maybe — just maybe — Covid-19 will actually have a positive impact in this tiny part of our lives. If online school could bring down textbook prices, it would be a huge win for college students who desperately need a break.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertfarrington/2020/08/07/will-online-college-courses-help-reduce-textbook-prices/#459ec1fc133c

Bay View Analytics

A majority of U.S. higher education teaching faculty now report that they are aware of open educational resources (OER) — an increase of 19 percentage points over the past four years. Increasing numbers of faculty are adopting OER and they rate the quality as equal to commercial alternatives.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/survey-finds-faculty-rate-the-quality-of-open-educational-resources-oer-as-equal-to-commercial-textbooks-301021333.html

Patrick Armijo, Durango Herald

Students at Fort Lewis College will increasingly benefit from open educational resources offered free online that replace often-costly textbooks with the assistance of a $31,000 grant from the state. “I’m really excited about this. I’m a believer in helping students keep costs down. Textbooks can cost anywhere from $20 to $250. They can be really expensive,” said Astrid Oliver, director of Reed Library. Oliver is coordinating the grant. The funds came from the Colorado Commission on Higher Education and were part of $1 million in grants disbursed to 34 separate higher education and post-secondary universities, colleges, schools and educational groups across the state.

https://durangoherald.com/articles/315885-flc-looks-for-free-online-replacements-for-textbooks

Penn State University

Funded primarily by Provost Nick Jones with support from Penn State World Campus, University Libraries, Teaching and Learning with Technology, and Barnes & Noble, the initial investment of approximately $245,000 has saved students $4.8 million in potential expenses on textbooks and other course materials. The success from these initiatives has enabled an ambitious three-year plan to be extended to invest an additional $600,000.

https://news.psu.edu/story/607328/2020/02/07/academics/open-affordable-textbook-efforts-save-students-48-million

Hudson Valley Community College

Spurred on by the possibility of making college even more affordable for its students, Hudson Valley Community College is now in its third year of adopting open educational resources. Also known as OER, open educational resources are open source instructional materials, written by experts, that faculty can adopt and adapt based upon their curriculum, often negating the need for students to purchase a textbook. The use of OER not only saves money for students but also allows faculty members to provide customizable content for their classes.

https://cccnews.info/2019/12/20/by-encouraging-homegrown-textbooks-hvcc-saves-its-students-a-quarter-mil/

By Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed
Student services company Chegg announced plans last week to acquire the online coding school Thinkful. To investors in the ed-tech space, the deal was not a surprising one — lots of ed-tech companies have been busy acquiring boot camps of late. Earlier this year, online program management company 2U snapped up Trilogy Education for a cool $750 million, and Zovio (formerly Bridgepoint Education) acquired Fullstack Academy for $17.5 million in cash plus 4.5 million shares of common stock.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/09/11/chegg%E2%80%99s-journey-textbook-rental-company-education-provider?

BRIAN BARRETT, Wired

Pearson’s digital-first initiative will dramatically bring down textbook costs on average, albeit by phasing out the concept of ownership. But increasingly, colleges are embracing textbooks that cost … nothing. Just as traditional software has a thriving open source community, textbooks have Open Educational Resources, complete textbooks that typically come free of charge digitally, or for a small fee—enough to cover the printing—in hard copy. And while it’s not an entirely new concept, OER has gained momentum in recent years, particularly as support has picked up at an institutional level, rather than on a course by course basis.

https://www.wired.com/story/digital-textbooks-radical-transformation/

Eric Johnson, Recode

So instead of selling giant hardcover textbooks like Calculus: Early Transcendentals (list price for a new hardcover copy: $277.20), Pearson is going to start renting digital textbooks for $40 to $80, updating them over the air. Next month, it will launch the first of a new series of mobile apps called Aida — a portmanteau of AI and Ada Lovelace — that will let calculus students take a picture of their homework and, Fallon said, get step-by-step corrections.

https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/2/20750863/john-fallon-pearson-education-textbook-digital-aida-teachers-kara-swisher-recode-decode-podcast

By Nick Hazelrigg, Inside Higher Ed

Survey finds the amount students spend on course materials each year has decreased, possibly indicating students are increasingly utilizing open-source material and other educational resources. According to the survey of more than 20,000 students across 41 institutions conducted by the National Association of College Stores, students on average spent $415 on course materials in the 2018-19 academic year, down from $484 last year. Student spending has declined almost every year in the last decade — in 2008 students spent an average of $700 on course materials.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/25/spending-and-costs-textbooks-continue-decrease-according-surveys

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

California State University’s Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) initiative has partnered with Lumen Learning to make courseware from the open educational resources provider available to faculty and students across the system.  Since 2010, CSU AL$ has worked with courseware providers to assemble a broad selection of free and low-cost course materials, to make it easier for faculty to find and adopt affordable textbooks and reduce the overall cost of education for CSU students. Materials are reviewed for accessibility as well as quality and integrity of the learning content. Through the partnership, Lumen’s digital courseware is now available to CSU instructors as a low-cost textbook option for many general education courses.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/07/18/cal-state-adds-lumen-learning-courseware-to-menu-of-affordable-textbooks.aspx

Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

In a recent survey, 90 percent of faculty reported that textbook affordability is a concern for their institution. Yet just 40 percent said their school has a program focused on reducing textbook costs. That’s according to the second annual FlatWorld Textbook Affordability Study, in which the learning materials publisher polled 786 faculty members at two- and four-year institutions across the country about their attitudes toward textbook costs.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/06/20/survey-majority-of-faculty-acknowledge-that-textbook-affordability-is-an-issue-on-their-campus.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

“Open” has become a definite thing. According to the latest public accounting, there were nearly 1.5 billion Creative Commons-licensed works in the world available for use in teaching and learning, including whole courses, textbooks, images, videos, quizzes, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, labs, games and simulations. Given that abundance of materials, it would be no surprise if you were to feel overwhelmed and unsure about where to start your search for free curriculum to use in the courses under your care. To help out, Campus Technology has developed this list of the best sites for obtaining free (and low-cost) digital textbooks.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/03/25/best-sources-for-free-digital-textbooks-and-more.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

The concept of “open learning” encompasses far more than what’s found in a textbook. These sources provide other kinds of resources that will boost your students’ learning.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/03/22/16-open-learning-resources-that-go-beyond-the-textbook.aspx