Towards development of OER derived custom-built open textbooks: A baseline survey of university teachers at the University of the South Pacific

Deepak Prasad,Tsuyoshi Usagawa

doi:10.19173/irrodl.v15i4.1873

Abstract

<p>Textbook prices have soared over the years, with several studies revealing many university students are finding it difficult to afford textbooks. Fortunately, two innovations – open educational resources (OER) and open textbooks – hold the potential to increase textbook affordability. Experts, though, have stated the obvious: that students can save money through open textbooks only if teachers are willing to develop and use them. Considering both the high price of textbooks and the benefits offered by OER and open textbooks, the aim of this study was to assess the University of the South Pacific (USP) teachers’ willingness towards development of custom-built OER derived open textbooks for their courses with a focus on providing a foundation for strategies to promote open textbook development at USP. This paper reports the findings of an online survey of 39 USP teachers. The results show that 17 teachers were willing to develop OER derived custom-built open textbooks for their courses. Besides this, there are findings relating to six important areas: teachers’ motivation to develop open textbooks; the frequency of more than one prescribed textbook per course; teachers’ awareness of the costs of the prescribed textbooks; the average cost of prescribed textbooks in a course; teachers’ awareness and utilization of OER and open textbooks; and teachers’ perceived barriers to using OER and types of challenges they encounter while using OER. These findings have been discussed in relation to research studies on OER and open textbooks.</p>

Highlights

Textbook prices have clearly spiralled upward in recent years; between 1978 and 2012 textbook costs in the United States of America have risen an alarming 812% (Perry, 2012). Hallam (2012) pointed out that the textbook industry thrives on the notion of ‘prescribed textbooks,’ with more students purchasing textbooks when told to do so by their teacher
When asked the average amount students paid for prescribed textbooks in semester 2, 2013 courses, the majority (47.22%) of teachers reported that the average price of prescribed textbooks for their course was between FJD100 to FJD200 (1 FJD is equivalent to 0.55 USD), 16.67% reported average cost within the range of FJD200-300, 11.11% indicated average cost between FJD000-100, while 25% said that they were not sure of the price (Table 4)
Bliss et al (2013) claimed that significant cost savings are possible by displacing traditional publisher textbooks with open textbooks; they cautioned that students can save money with open textbooks only if teachers are willing to develop them

Summary

Introduction

Textbook prices have clearly spiralled upward in recent years; between 1978 and 2012 textbook costs in the United States of America have risen an alarming 812% (Perry, 2012). Hallam (2012) pointed out that the textbook industry thrives on the notion of ‘prescribed textbooks,’ with more students purchasing textbooks when told to do so by their teacher. According to a 2013 survey of 2,039 students from more than 150 different university campuses, 65% of students indicated they had decided against buying a textbook because it was too expensive, 48% said the cost of textbooks had an impact on how many or which classes they took, and 94% of the students who had avoided buying a prescribed textbook said they were concerned that doing so would negatively affect their grade in that course (Senack, 2014). The above discussion illustrates that the high cost of textbooks has a cumulative adverse impact on higher education that requires a solution

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