The price of college textbooks skyrocketed over the years. According to the federation of Student Public Interest Research Groups (Senack, 2014), the cost of new college textbooks increased by 82% between the years 2002 and 2012. The average cost of college textbooks and school supplies for the 2016-2017 academic year was estimated as $1,250 per student. (Collegeboard 2016).
Some research showed that the high cost of textbooks resulted in students not purchasing required materials, dropping courses, or taking fewer credits in a semester (Florida Virtual Campus, 2012). The Florida Virtual Campus (2012) study results showed that 64% of over 22,000 higher education students in Florida did not acquire a required textbook because of the high cost. The same study further reported that 49% took fewer classes, 27% dropped a class, and 21% withdrew from a class in the spring semester of 2012 because of financial struggles induced by textbook prices. Furthermore, increase in time to degree completion as well as decrease in academic success can be negative results in the long term for those who did not have required course materials and had to take less credits per semester.
On the other hand, high quality open textbooks have been developed and made available freely to the students to reduce their financial burden. The open textbooks are written by faculty members, subjected to peer review process to improve the content quality, and released freely under open licenses (Senack, 2015). The open licenses of such textbooks grant learners and educators usage rights including, retain, reuse, revise, redistribute, and remix as long as credit is given to the original developer of open textbooks (Wiley, 2015). These rights empower faculty members to customize open textbooks without any restrictions in order to better meet their students’ learning needs.
Consequently, this study aimed to expand and enrich understanding of the lived experiences of faculty who have adopted open textbooks in 4-year universities and community colleges to teach students in the USA. The results can help researcher reveal commonalities and differences between the experiences of faculty members teaching in different higher educational settings.
A qualitative research approach was utilized as the conceptual framework for the design of the study. In order to recruit study participants, purposive sampling strategy sugggested by Fraenkel, Wallen and Hyun (2011) was used. In this sampling strategy, researchers relied on personal judgment and particularly considered purpose of the study and their own knowledge about the target population (Fraenkel, Wallen and Hyun, 2011). The overarching research question is: What are the lived experiences of faculty who have adopted open textbooks in community colleges and four-year universities?
The researchers recruited 12 faculty members to conduct semi-structured interviews per participant. The audio-recorded interviews lasted from 35 minutes to 65 minutes. Finally, the interview data was analyzed after audio-recording files were transcribed. The findings can be highly interesting and relevant to the OER18 Conference participants.
Collegeboard. 2016. Average estimated undergraduate budgets. [Online]. [Accessed 16 November 2016]. Available from https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/average-estimated-undergraduate-budgets-2016-17
Florida Virtual Campus. 2012. 2012 Florida student textbook survey. [Online]. [Accessed 12 March 2016]. Available from http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/pdf/2012_Florida_Student_Textbook_Survey.pdf
Fraenkel, J. R., Wallen, N. E. and Hyun, H. H. eds. 2011. How to design and evaluate research in education. 8th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies.
Senack, E. 2015. Fixing the broken textbook market: How student respond to high textbook costs and demand alternatives. Washington:Center for Public Interest Research, Inc. [Accessed 12 September 2016]. Available from http://www.studentpirgs.org/sites/student/files/reports/NATIONAL%20Fixing%20Broken%20Textbooks%20Report1.pdf
Senack, E. 2015. Open textbooks: The billion-dollar solution. [Online]. Washington:Center for Public Interest Research, Inc. [Accessed 12 September 2016]. Available from http://www.studentpirgs.org/sites/student/files/reports/The%20Billion%20Dollar%20Solution.pdf
Wiley, D. 2015. The MOOC misstep and the open education infrastructure. In: Bonk, C. J., Lee, M. M., Reeves, T. C. and Reynolds, T. H. eds. MOOCs and open education around the world. New York, NY: Routledge, pp.3-11.