Library
There are many benefits to using OER, including affordability, improving student success, promoting accessibility and inclusion, and easy access.
The price of textbooks has increased significantly over time, even accounting for inflation. According to the CBC, “over the past 15 years, the cost of university textbooks has increased more than four times the rate of inflation. In the past three decades, the costs have risen some 834%; this is more than double the rate of increase in house prices and triple the cost increases in the Consumer Price Index” (CBC, 2014). For students already struggling financially, the cost of textbooks can be insurmountable.
Due to the high price, 65% of students report not purchasing a textbook because it was too expensive; of these students, 94% were concerned that not purchasing the textbook would hurt their overall grade (Student Public Interest Research Groups, 2014). What starts as an economic challenge becomes an academic issue, as students can’t learn from textbooks they can’t afford. Matt Reed argues that “a great book that goes unbought and unread isn’t as good as a pretty good book that a student actually reads” (Reed, 2021).
Unlike proprietary publisher content, OER can be adapted to meet accessibility requirements.
OER offers the opportunity for instructors to adapt and curate a wide range of materials. This material may be “authored by a diverse set of individuals, including those who identify as disabled, normalizing and reducing stigma while sharing viewpoints that have historically been marginalized” (SPARC, 2018).
With the permissions granted by open licenses, OER have enhanced access options. Although OER can be in any format, they are primarily available digitally. Since OER are free, students do not need to log in or use a special platform to access these digital texts. Students can read OER on any device, including mobile devices, and in any country. OER can also be downloaded to be read offline, as well as printed without restriction.
Course resources, open or otherwise, do not impact a course’s transferability to another institution.
Course resources are not reported each term to make a transfer decision or maintain a transfer agreement, including interprovincial agreements (Canadian Information Centre for International Credentials, 2019).
For more information, please see:
The labour associated with creating OER is widely recognized. At Red Deer Polytechnic, we are currently exploring ways to compensate faculty who are creating OER.
At other institutions across Canada, faculty are compensated for this labour in a variety of ways:
In some cases, OER creation is included in the workload for a course. Faculty often create course resources as part of the expected labour associated with that course, and choose afterwards to license and publish these resources as OER.
Many OER creators choose to donate their labour freely because they believe in the value of sharing knowledge openly. For more information about why RDP instructors have created or adopted OER, please see RDP OER Guide: Student & Faculty Showcase.
The price of textbooks has increased significantly over time, even accounting for inflation. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, consumer prices for college textbooks increased 88% from 2006 to 2016 (U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, 2016). According to the CBC, “over the past 15 years, the cost of university textbooks has increased more than four times the rate of inflation. In the past three decades, the costs have risen some 834%; this is more than double the rate of increase in house prices and triple the cost increases in the Consumer Price Index” (CBC, 2014).
As a result, 65% of students report not purchasing a textbook because it was too expensive; of these students, 94% were concerned that not purchasing the textbook would hurt their overall grade (Student Public Interest Research Groups, 2014). Without access to learning resources, student success is negatively impacted.
For students already struggling financially, the cost of textbooks can be insurmountable. A recent study at the University of Manitoba indicated that 35.3% of students experienced some degree of food insecurity throughout their degree (Entz, Slater, & Desmarais, 2017). Additionally, a pandemic-time study conducted by Statistics Canada found that 48% of students with a job reported either losing their job or being temporarily laid off (Statistics Canada, 2020).
RDP students, in an informal poll (2019), indicated that if they did not have to pay the high cost of textbooks, they could instead have paid for:
Red Deer Polytechnic recognizes that our campus is situated on Treaty 7 land, the traditional territory of the Blackfoot, Tsuu T’ina and Stoney Nakoda peoples, and that the central Alberta region we serve falls under Treaty 6, traditional Métis, Cree and Saulteaux territory. We honour the First Peoples who have lived here since time immemorial, and we give thanks for the land where RDP sits. This is where we will strive to honour and transform our relationships with one another.