Abstract
The results of the first cross-campus survey of student opinions on Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) courses are in: City University of New York (CUNY) students like their ZTC courses, primarily for the cost savings and ease of access. The survey results yield rich data about how positively students feel about their Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) courses as well as ways to improve the design and delivery of Zero Textbook Cost courses to make them more beneficial for student learning.
Highlights
The promise of Open Educational Resources’ (OER) pedagogical and cost benefits align directly with City University of New York’s (CUNY) mission:“as a vehicle for the upward mobility of the disadvantaged in the City of New York ... [to] remain responsive to the needs of its urban setting ... [while ensuring] equal access and opportunity to students, faculty and staff from all ethnic and racial groups and without regard to gender” (CUNY, 2018b).Many CUNY undergraduate students qualify for financial aid: 54% are Pell Grant recipients, 37.1% have household incomes of less than $20,000 per year, and 26.7% of CUNY undergraduate students work over 20 hours per week to support their family’s income
For the purposes of this survey and in this article, Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) is the nomenclature used since it is both more understood by students and a more accurate reflection of the diverse materials used by CUNY ZTC course instructors. We created this survey for several reasons—to compare previous research done by other large scale university systems on student opinions of OER with student opinions at CUNY, and to draw out more specific answers to questions that relate to our local student population, as well as to the questions CUNY faculty ask about OER
We want to be able to see whether studies done at Florida public institutions relate to our students’ needs in an urban public university system in New York City; in the second instance we wanted to focus on the specific needs and experiences of CUNY students –how do they feel about learning with digital materials in general and in their ZTC courses, ? Exactly how and with what technology do they access their ZTC course materials and where do they do so? What do they like and dislike about their ZTC courses? To get a closer look at students’ true opinions of these courses, we offered several open-ended questions on the survey
Summary
The promise of Open Educational Resources’ (OER) pedagogical and cost benefits align directly with City University of New York’s (CUNY) mission:“as a vehicle for the upward mobility of the disadvantaged in the City of New York ... [to] remain responsive to the needs of its urban setting ... [while ensuring] equal access and opportunity to students, faculty and staff from all ethnic and racial groups and without regard to gender” (CUNY, 2018b).Many CUNY undergraduate students qualify for financial aid: 54% are Pell Grant recipients, 37.1% have household incomes of less than $20,000 per year (in one of the most expensive markets in the country), and 26.7% of CUNY undergraduate students work over 20 hours per week to support their family’s income. In April of 2017 New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo announced $8 million in funding for Open Educational Resources (OER) adoption across CUNY and State University of New York (SUNY) systems (in response to funding requests from librarians at both institutions). From these funds, CUNY was able to support programs for OER adoption at varying levels across all 24 campuses during the 2017–18 academic year. Since savings from OER grow over time and the second year of funding will expand the OER initiative, by spring 2019 the initiative is projected to impact 260,000 students for a total savings of $28 million (New York State, Office of the Governor, 2018)
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