HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Faculty at Marshall University is continuing to look at ways to make textbooks more affordable, and in some cases free, for students.
The university recently announced it has added an open textbook program for selected courses, designed to assist students with free educational materials from the Open Access Textbook program.
The Open Textbook Network (OTN) is a concept where faculty utilize electronic text that is available through the open text networks across the country.
The materials on the network are often free to the student and they give the faculty member the ability to modify them, add to them, or to use portions if they decide not to use the entire text.
Dr. Monica Brooks, the associate vice president for libraries and online learning at Marshall University, told MetroNews faculty members are extremely concerned about textbook affordability for students because some come from difficult financial backgrounds.
“Textbooks and other supplementary materials tend to be very high-cost options,” Brooks said.
“We have several interested individuals that want to select materials, use materials and even contribute to materials, if they don’t create their own, to provide students with a quality learning experience.”
According to Marshall, as a result of Marshall’s Student Government Association initiative that spearheaded the program, Marshall joined the OTN on July 1.
OTN provides its 120 institutional members with training, publishing resources and an active community of professionals who are interested in expanding the adoption of free textbooks that may be retained, reused, revised, remixed and redistributed, per release.
Marshall Libraries will be hosting two OTN representatives for a faculty workshop on January 31 from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the Drinko Library.
Brooks said the program’s availability depends on the faculty member’s comfort with using this resource. Some disciplines will have robust selections to choose from through several of these textbook networks available online. But then other disciplines may not be migrated over to the programs as fast, according to her.
“We are going to review what’s out there and we will assist them,” Brooks said of the workshop. “We have trainers coming in from the Open Textbook Network that we subscribe to and they are going to share with faculty the tips and tricks to locating and reviewing textbooks in their disciplines.”
“It may spark some interest and they may consider working it into the curriculum.”
Larry Sheret, the scholarly communication and open educational resources librarian at Marshall said that past experience at other universities indicates that 45 percent of faculty who review open textbooks end up adopting open textbooks. He added that a typical textbook could cost $100.
If 10 classrooms with 25 students in each class adopt an open textbook, this could save about $25,000 per semester for students, according to Sheret.
Sheret and Associate Dean of Libraries Jingping Zhang have been “champions” for the movement, Brooks said. She also thanked Senior VP for Institutional Research, Michael McGuffey, and University Chief Financial Officer Mark Robinson for backing the program.
Brooks was also complimentary of the libraries’ relationship with the university bookstore. She said the bookstore has been supportive of the program and they often assist in getting hard copies of textbooks for some high-cost course to have them available at the library.
For additional information about open textbooks and other types of open educational resources at Marshall, visit the Open Educational Resources guide at libguides.marshall.edu/OpenEducationalResources.