SHREVEPORT – By the first week of college classes, students check off the highest cost items on their financial lists like tuition, meal plans and housing.
But one stubborn college expense rears its head – textbooks.
That’s why LSUS librarian David Gaither has led the university’s efforts to promote open education resources – free textbooks and other learning resources.
LSUS leads the state with students saving $4.7 million this past academic year in classes that didn’t require textbooks that students purchase.
Gaither, the scholarly communications and analytics librarian, said LSUS also tops Louisiana with $10 million saved since 2014.
“The average cost of a textbook nationally is $109,” Gaither said. “Students are paying that per class, which isn’t considering classes that may require multiple textbooks or supplemental materials.
“It’s proven that students who don’t have to worry about these costs perform better. Other studies show that offering open education resources creates student belief that professors and the university foster a sense of belonging and community, which fits LSUS’s mission.”
LSUS is part of the Affordable Learning LOUISiana initiative, a partnership through the state’s college libraries to offer and create open access materials.
Open education resources particularly mesh well with online education, which is how the majority of LSUS students take their classes.
Ninety-four percent of LSUS graduate students took at least one class this past academic year that used open education or affordable education resources.
Affordable education resources are materials that are offered at little or no cost to the student but are paid for through library funds or grants.
Gaither interacted with students and faculty Monday on the first day of classes to spread further awareness of these resources. He stood at a booth that included open education resource facts and a huge “Thank You” card signed by LSUS students.
“Open education resources are specifically designed for education and distributed with a creative commons license that allows anyone to use it,” said Gaither, a leading scholar in this topic who was awarded an Open Education Research Fellowship for this academic year. “The benefit for professors is that these resources unshackle them from the burden of wondering whether students can afford the book.
“The professor also has the freedom to design instructional materials. They can pick and choose from various open education resources, maybe a chapter from this book and another from that book. This uses an open pedagogical model that allows scholars to share their work without worrying about subscription barriers.”
Open education resources are cited more in academic research because of the unlimited access to those materials, which can help faculty climb the academic ladder to promotions and tenure.
While Gaither noted that graduate classes are adapting faster than undergraduate classes, open education resources are growing in popularity in the undergraduate ranks as well.
Math assistant professors Drs. Irina Ilioaea and Stefan Patterson teamed up to author an open education resource textbook to be released later this fall for their discrete mathematics class.
“Our motivation for writing this textbook for our LSUS students was that most textbooks assume a stronger background in calculus and trigonometry,” Ilioaea said. “Since the only prerequisite we require for taking discrete mathematics is college algebra, we wanted to help our students succeed in taking this course without needing notions from other courses.
“One of the most challenging topics in this class is proof-writing. Without previous exposure, it’s difficult to grasp in just one semester. We structured the textbook in a way that students have the opportunity to write proofs on results immediately after we define the main mathematical concepts. Since our mission as teachers is to create an effective learning environment, having a textbook that fits our students needs and is free of cost makes using OER resources an essential tool for student success.”
Gaither said the toughest hurdle to clear in convincing some faculty to use open education resources is the convenience of ancillary materials like PowerPoint presentations and quiz and test question banks that publishers like Pearson provide.
But Patterson is creating a question bank to go along with the math textbook, something Gaither said is becoming more common with open education resources.
“There are faculty incentives to use and create open education resource materials,” Gaither said. “I’m really hopeful that through further communication and outreach and a longer timeline, we can increase open education resource adoption in the spring semester.”
