So good evening everyone and welcome to our textbook town hall. So joining us tonight
we have Anita Walz, the open education librarian, we have Cara Boim, Rex Willis, Julia Billingsley,
and Hannah Whiteman. I'm Avalon Roche and I'm the director of academic affairs for SGA and all four
of our students here tonight have agreed to share their experiences with textbook and education
resources on campus and it should be a good conversation. We're going to start with a little
bit of introduction on what open education is to fill in any audience members who don't know and
then we'll move into a facilitated conversation and then take some questions and answers.
Okay so my name is Anita Walz. I am the open education librarian at Virginia Tech and I have
this display that sits outside of my office. The second week of class I had several students come
in and say do you have my textbook because the sign says "Do you wish your textbooks were free?
Ours are" and students saw that and thought this is where I can get my textbook at no charge.
And I thought I work on this problem of course textbooks are too expensive but what can I do
right now? Many of my solutions are geared toward long term, so I'm going to talk to you a little
bit about long-term solutions but I want to first highlight for those of you who are watching this
at a different time the graph that you see on the screen behind the panel shows you that the
cost of textbooks has gone up over a thousand percent between 1978 and 2016. If you are not
a recent college graduate things are a lot more expensive than they were when you were in school.
So unless you're a student who takes one of the intro to management courses or biology
for non-majors or you're in electromagnetics or maybe you're taking an intro to stat course
you probably have some issues with textbook costs but maybe your your professor decides that he or
she will use course notes or things that they've developed themselves or articles or other things
but for the majority of students cost is a problem so we point out these four particular
books and I have them here they look like normal books they have figures and all kinds of things
inside and you can see those if you like but the main question is well so this looks
exactly like a normal book what is different how are these different why are they different
these are different because they have a license on them that allows them to be freely copied without
worry about copyright violation it also allows them to be adapted so if you are a future business
professor and you decide that you want to adapt a book to fit your course you can
that is how these kinds of materials are licensed they have a creative commons license on them um
there are several different creative commons licenses you see on the screen behind you
and they tell you up front what you can do with something what you can't do with it
we're seeing these on a lot of different kinds of of resources
you may also see these in your normal life i've seen them on card games and people told me they've
seen them on knitting patterns and websites and so they're an indicator of what you can do with
um with a particular kind of content same as this brochure and i will stop talking very briefly
but this brochure is a summary of these kinds of licenses and gives you more details on
what they are what they do and then on the back what you can find that has these licenses on them
so with these licenses you can not only copy but you can adapt you can remix you can keep something
so it does never expire um you could share with a friend so they have one you have one and on and on
and on and it's not illegal which is really cool so this is a little bit a little bit of background
on how textbooks are tend to be produced right now that might be helpful as you're thinking about how
this is different than how these kinds of books or other materials with these licenses are different
right now books are produced by they're written by an author the author is paid by a publisher
the publisher is beholden to stakeholders shareholders sorry of people in the market
who invest money in their company and they're expected to turn a profit so they sell a book
they create a book they it's under copyright they sell it back and theoretically people
aren't making illegal copies and they can make money off of these books and this is part of this
is how these kinds of things are sustained so this is a sustainability model for our current textbook
the materials that you're passing around are under a different business model where a funder may may
pay a publisher and the publisher really could be anyone the university libraries have become one
of these kind of publishers with those two books that you saw going around we pay some money to
the author the author releases the textbook with a creative commons license on it and you don't pay
anything so they're not free to produce but they're free to read they're free to remix it
takes time but there is a logic and a difference in how they're how they're produced so the
creative commons license is the really important part of this of this process because it tells
people what they can and cannot do so the last the bottom two that says not oer not open educational
resource don't allow any changes the ones above that absolutely do and there are some some
not rules but guidelines for attribution saying this material came from Avalon
and it was under this license and i used it because she put it under this license
so it's a giving permission in advance
beyond free your teachers can customize and share these
you can customize you can create you can experience
this kind of education lends itself to students making things which Virginia Tech is particularly
good at having students engaging students in practical learning experiences
so at the university libraries we support a number of tools
for authoring for adaptation and we don't just work with books
and so my my last slide really is to tell you that this open education it's a movement
it's a philosophy it's a set of value-driven practices that make a core and people do all
kinds of interesting things as a result when they prioritize when students and faculty prioritize
sharing their work you prioritize sharing your work you give feedback to each other
your teachers incorporate new ideas about teaching using open licenses giving credit and really
putting students in the learning process at the center rather than than maybe some other things so
this conversation is yours thank you for inviting me and I'm happy to jump in just let me know if
when and if that's helpful so the handout that you received when you came in has some information
here at the bottom that talks about um long-term oops long-term strategies i have short-term
strategies these are short-term strategies the bottom ones are long-term strategies
so i invite you to to take a look at this it's a conversation it's yours thank you all right
thank you Anita so moving into the discussion part of tonight so i have a handful of questions
I'm just going to put out to our panel and then has you guys feel fit to answer there's
like no hand raising or anything just jump in and push back and ask questions as needed so
all right our first question is do you believe that the cost of learning materials is a barrier
to your learning why why not and if yes how have you personally dealt with this?
I pay for my own textbooks every year and I've often found that I often like I'd look for the
cheapest copy available so I can't like on search on the internet search on amazon or whatever
or check and find the cheapest version available and sometimes i
it's difficult to determine whether i want to rent or to buy a book because if you rent it
it's cheaper but if you buy it then you can maybe sell it back but there's no guarantee that the
same professor will be teaching the next semester so you don't know when you'll be able to get money
back right yeah i was i'm actually i took that non non-major biology class that um that you mentioned
now has an openly sourced textbook and the textbook was so expensive i got an edition that
was way older and i believe there was information that i did not receive because there was things
that chapters that we read that i was like this is totally different than the chapter that was
assigned um and also like problems that we were supposed to work on or at least think about that
weren't in my textbook um so it's impacted like some of the earliest classes i took um but even
today like sometimes all are up for the online pdf version of things um and i think i learned
better with physically holding a book and being able to highlight what i want to remember and so
ever to do it like look at it online um because it's a tenth of the cost or whatever um it really
is not helpful or productive to my kind of learning i'll also say that oftentimes
professors obviously most of them have textbooks that are mandatory for class but if there's not
assignments that come directly out of it and if it's just kind of to add to the lecture material
they'll say if you can get by without reading the textbook do it because if you like if you don't
want to pay for it which like if you can get by sure but how do you know if you can get by without
the textbook if you don't if you can't afford to pay for it um and i also know plenty of people and
i've done this myself who will wait till like the week of the first test to decide whether or not
they're going to buy the book just because if they feel they can't get by they're not going to buy it
but then what are they missing out by not having a textbook and not having those resources
to supplement their lectures and things yeah
your responses all right so the next question is how much did you expect to pay this semester
for learning materials and then how much were you asked to pay how much did you actually pay
if there's a variation between the three and then how did you feel about this did you try to reduce
the cost if you did how um and did you have to drop any classes because your required material
well i was supposed for i'm taking six classes and most of my classes are
like small books but they're like 20 30 each and then there's like six or seven for a class
like i think this semester of 13 individual books for my classes like it was supposed to come out to
like over a thousand dollars and my grandpa helps me with my textbooks because they're so expensive
and he was like that's not gonna work so i got it down to under like 500 through like amazon rentals
um used books on amazon are a godsend like you can get a book that was supposed to be like 35
from the bookstore for like five dollars plus like 1.99 shipping or amazon prime free
and so like it was if i wasn't able to have other resources to get it like i would have
had to drop like three of my classes and one of my classes that had like the most expensive book
the book itself was 30 but the access code to access like the program for that book was over
a hundred dollars and like what they didn't tell you was if you get the access code there's an
online version of the book so you don't even need the paper version but they tell you that after
you buy it it was so disappointing um i always expect to pay at least
in the ballpark of 150 to 200 that's just like i think it's averaged out to per semester
after i switched out of stem right so like when i was in stem it would be over 500 usually because
the textbooks were larger and be multiple hundred dollars each and then you'd have
access codes and once i switched to liberal arts it'd be more frequent books or like more
a high number of books but for lower cost per book and so i would average that's probably what
i expect to pay what i was asked to pay i don't i can't even tell you anymore because i've stopped
looking at what the bookstore offers i always go straight to chug amazon and book holders
um and or as friends that have taken the classes i know that i'm in this semester um this semester
because i'm a senior i decided i wasn't i'm not gonna take classes that require silly books so i
kind of was one that's because i was able to like what requirements i have left and then
what i chose my electives based on like do i do i want to do a lot of reading and therefore pay
for a lot of textbooks that i can't afford no um so i think i paid 60 maximum and that was still
going through sources that were affordable um like a textbook for one of my classes was going to be
over 100 so i have the pdf version for 19.99 so um yeah similarly this semester i'm only taking
12 credits and um i'm a senior so a lot two of my classes don't even meet regularly it's more
we work and do group work and it's consulting so we go meet with a client things like that so
those didn't require textbooks but um the two classes that even required reading material
they i had to pay for course packs so then it wasn't even a textbook that would help me learn
so much as as it was here pay for your homework i said okay great um but then i think i'm trying
to think back to my most like expensive semester with textbooks so and it was probably around my
sophomore year taking 15 credits and i think it got up to like 600 just because of the classes
that i was taking but they were the mandatory classes with the mandatory books um so between
the classes that said you can't have the older edition you need the newest one um or you need the
professor edition of this class or the virginia tech edition of this book or something like that
um it kind of limits your ability to find cheaper versions but anywhere
i could i definitely try and do like rent books amazon things like that um
or try and find them try and buy them from someone who had them the year before and it's nice it will
sell them to me for cheaper so facebook pages yeah you scan the beginning and end the every semester
and you're just like they're like textbooks for sale 10 i just want them gone yeah people fight
just please uh i'm a sophomore so i'm still taking all those classes with like a lot of books um and
i recently switched majors so i'm kind of like trying to catch up and so i started the semester
with like 21 credits and then and then i ended up one of my classes was required like top at which
is like some kind of online thing and so which i had to do before but um yeah so i dropped that
one now i'm doing 18. um because i didn't want to pay for it because it's like i think like
30 dollars or something that's awesome uh first semester then and i quicker so yeah that's what
bothered me about it it's weird if you don't pay for it you like lose out you can't participate
in a lot of classes yeah right clicker and i think that's something that was like kind of
that's like a really big disadvantage like what if someone doesn't have thirty dollars to pay
at the exact moment that that professor decides like we're gonna start attendance on this like
i'm pretty sure three of my classes required top hat last semester like last spring and
if i didn't have top hat like i bought it during class one time because they're like
if you don't have top hat in the next 10 minutes you're not getting class attendance
and you're getting a job on this quiz wow and like that was like common for classes like they're like
top head out now you have five minutes to log in or you don't get credit for this class
and large classes there was like multi like it was it was like my um like large required classes like
um comparative politics intro to politics like my biology my general biology which when i took
gen bio like non-major it was with the concepts biology book but i paid 29
for that and i thought it was the greatest thing in the entire world yeah no mine was like
four or three somewhere in the 300s or for like the stem majors because their book was like big
so you always know like differences in cost between majors and then between like
lower and upper level courses yes yeah i would agree yeah yeah and something this is kind of
silly but like i have had classes that have at least five or more smaller books and then you
look to the syllabus and you see the reading list it's like they use one book once because there's
just one chapter the professor wants you to read so no i mean i'll i'll bar my classmate i'll try
to find the library i won't but i refuse to buy a textbook for one chapter or two chapters right
so always the syllabus is important in making that decision i'd say i'm always worried about like
having especially with like my friends to constitutional law and like that textbook
was like a few hundred dollars but it wasn't one that they wanted to rent because they might need
it in the future and so they thought that they'd be at a disadvantage if they didn't buy it now
and like that kind of concerns me because like what if you can't afford it now but
like the things that you're going to be using it for now are going to impact your future too
um so just to jump in actually so full disclosure i don't pay for my textbooks
because i'm on the gi bill so i actually get a semester stipend that pays like covers the cost
and i actually think that's really telling because i'm given between six and seven hundred dollars a
semester yeah um and so that's kind of like a baseline average cost that the government
expects students on their payroll today um and again like when like finding books
at cheaper costs it really varies so i take an intro class last semester um to make up
a credit and i was able to find two of the three books um to rent but one of them i had to buy new
and so right now i'm just kind of sitting on this like 60 book that i'm never gonna use again until
um i'm able to sell it like at the end of the semester so it's really really interesting little
little tricks i guess that like students learn i found like my required classes have like the
most expensive textbooks and the classes that i take for like interest and like electives
tend to have less required material and more like lecture based knowledge and not really
and more focused on like understanding like conversations with the material not really
like hey go read two chapters and like we'll talk about it it's like hey this is something
that like we're gonna learn here let me walk you through it and like those kind of classes i feel
like i've learned better in because i'm not just like handed a book instead of teach yourself and
like come with questions yeah i would bring a point i don't know if it's been mentioned before
but teachers have the option or the department have the option of giving the library the book
if they're using it like if it's ongoing in a lecture they can give it to the library and ask
them to have it on early rental so you can max take it for two hours that brings around so many
circulation because so many people can use the book and sometimes the book might not be like
you need it every day you just need it probably for one homework or fun one reading and if it's
like one or two books which is there some people who can afford to buy it can buy it but if you can
like spend your time in the library why because most of the people study in the library so they
can use those resources too but i think sometimes both teachers all the students don't know about it
the teachers don't know that they can do and students don't know they can utilize it i mean
and i and because i've had professors who've like announced who announced that at the beginning of
the semester there's like there's library copies on reserve and but i was i remember it being in
like a 60 person class and there's like yeah there's two copies in the library i was like
right well for all six all sixty of us if we're gonna rely on the two copies so i have big classes
but i found many people oh yeah i'm sure that not a lot of people use what i did was at the start
of sam i just go all classes i look at the library which book is there if there's an older edition if
i can like manage just reading through chapters if that's needed i i utilize those options yeah
i feel like if if it pushed towards department and if they try to like get our books in library
i think that can like help others who like maybe don't want to spend so much yeah oh yeah i agree
thank you for the library advertisement so if you look at your at your handout just by the way
first two links um tell you where you can look online to see if the library has your book
and then one of the solutions further down here is to ask your professor to put the book on reserve
or to request the library purchase copy or to purchase an electronic copy of the book
that the library owns and that you could get into so um thank you for that unsolicited
library advertisement all right so i'm going to move on to the next question um so when discussing
like the cost of course materials with like your peers and classmates and friends um have you
found that any like the cost does the cost raise any ethical issues um like among your circles
so like i think one example would be like a student downloading a textbook illegally or
um maybe like buying it and like reading the one chapter and then returning the book
or something along those lines honestly i don't think my friends like would i don't
even know how i would do like how you would do that yeah obviously i don't think that like
i feel like it's more likely that i would borrow someone's book than try and like find a way to
like go around like sometimes i'll do those those things where you like sign up for like
previews of books and then cancel like a few days later if you need like a like a paragraph
of a thing right but like that's also not illegal i've been so i've known people who so the whole p
finding your like the pdf of the textbook online has i think become more common though it's
not legal i'm sure but it's become more common not there i had a class one this semester where
some girl posted on canvas i said she went for i said that was full
i mean i think everyone was like thank you but we were all kind of like okay um and then
i definitely know i know of um two elective courses that require you to buy um connect
accounts and like pay for the e-textbook that way and i literally know people this
semester who have finished the course in two weeks because it's online and self-paced
so that they could get it within the two-week trial
so they're literally just they need the credits and they're like forcing themselves into two weeks
to avoid paying for the textbook that kind of frustrates me i wish i kind of would have known
that to me but almost because that's the class i had to buy connect for and it's expensive
it's like 130 dollars for the system yeah okay so our next question is are learning resource costs
something that you think affects most students only some students or only a few students
and again this is your opinion so you know there's no wrong or right answer
it sounds like most dude yeah i'm your conversation but
yeah i definitely think it affects most students because i mean i don't know any
students who don't have to buy textbooks for our class at some point but definitely the um
how it affects each student would vary largely but i mean i'm um i remember sophomore year i worked
enough over the summer to be able to afford to pay my rent throughout the year so that
was like a responsibility given to me from my parents which is okay great but then i remember
the first like the month like in august and then in january i was like i either
need you to pay my rent this month or pay for my textbooks because i like i don't have enough to
do both and keep paying my rent all year so kind of things like that i mean i'm i feel lucky that
they were able to do one of the two but um it's definitely not not it varies for everyone but
my friends pointed out that it's kind of like almost like underestimated when like looking
at like how much it costs to go here like when you look at like the breakdown of costs
like on like on like hokey spot where it's like look at like it cost this much approximately
for textbooks and supplies and last time i checked i think it was like a thousand
dollars allocated for the whole year but between like the materials you need like yeah
course wise and then just like pens papers printer stuff like that i know that one firsthand i just
got my computer back since october like two days ago and like that's like definitely not
within the thousand dollar range for an entire year that's more like a semester and so i know
that when i got here i was shocked like i had no clue how expensive it was gonna be for like
the books i was like well i'm already paying a lot of money to be in this class but they're not gonna
ask you to pay like almost as much as i pay per class to like pay for a textbook but they do and
like i feel like that's not really communicated to like kids going into college just like how much
it costs like like to like be a student yeah like besides like the cost of education like it's the
hidden like is it just another barrier that you don't it's not as you don't really plan about
that like when you plan like what scholarships can i get for like tuition or like housing stuff
and like food you don't only think of textbooks being like a major aspect of what you're paying
for when you go to college because you kind of like well they're here to teach me material and
you're given textbooks all throughout your entire life and then all of a sudden they're like oh just
kidding we're not going to cover this cost anymore here you go here's our bill and you're like yikes
so a follow-up question um does it surprise you to know that some people are to learn i guess that
some people say that expensive learning materials are not an issue for virginia tech students
because there's an on-campus steakhouse and because some students
drive expensive cars and that this is an actual comment that has been made
so does it surprise you that perspective does it not surprise you and how would
you i mean how would you how would you respond to this and like try to i guess inform someone
who's thinking along these lines like about the reality that students look at can i answer them
i i
feel that that is a very superficial understanding of our student body and you are always going to
have people who have lots of money and lots of people who do not have lots of money and
to characterize our students as being universally wealthy i think is very short-sighted um
you don't you don't know what that student's story is i think what kills me is uh the steak house
comment like we pay for that i pay for a meal place and i can half off on those steaks like
if it's within my meal plan i'm gonna like we're gonna choose that meal plan exactly we're taking
ourselves i think that's kind of also undermining like what people have gone through to get here
is like people like i'm an out of state student and i know my mom works
way too many hours just so i can afford to go here and like pay for stuff and so i feel like
that's kind of like undermines like the work that like she's done to make sure that i can be here
and so i think that that's just looking at like a surface level of like the stereotype and it's like
just because someone drives a nice car doesn't mean they're financially secure necessarily
and that's like what about all those people you see walking around
they might not have well the reality is that we have food pantries on campus and we've had
homeless students we've had students with children who are single parents you just don't know i think
i think these assumptions are very dangerous to me about people in general right that you
don't know someone's situation unless you know them yeah that's that's not a fair
characterization i'd also say that while you could look at virginia tech from the outside
and just kind of look at the numbers there might be a lot of wealth at virginia tech but
again like you're saying it's not it's not everyone not everyone has the equal amount of
wealth and i would argue yes that the nice flashy cars that you notice are certainly a minority
of that representation of the like it's just that it's not shocking to me that someone
would use nice cars in a steakhouse i thought you said study house for some reason
what is that like that the library yes that's frustrating but yeah i think it is frustrating
because it is so complex i remember sending a meeting with administrators talking about how
much more wealthy statistically our student body is um to the national average um i think our
university and maybe university of virginia um are surpassing the national average at alarming
rates and and so i think one of the conversations around that was like um i mean how are we you
know recruiting and retaining students um that are first-generation students that come from a
wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds um that come from rural areas the truth of the matter is
that we we already do have those students and of course that's a good important metric to continue
to recruit and retain um but it was frustrating some of those meetings talking about um well we
already are so wealthy when i don't think that the what was really at the question was well how are
we retaining the students that we have if we are not addressing the costs that are impacting them
um it's all it's good to think to the future how we can recruit more but right now let's
worry about retaining the current students that we have that are struggling financially because
of socioeconomic factors um and other factors that play into their time of between attack so that
those are some frustrating conversations to be in around because um looking at the demographics of a
student body as as large and varied as as ours is i think um it is hard to focus in on on the
on the real people and not just the numbers all right well thank you um so my next question is
what do you wish that your professors and administrators knew about your experiences
with learning materials i think for me i was just thinking about this as as someone maybe mentioned
that they enjoyed the classes without textbooks more because of the the structure of the class
the classes that i have retained the most information from never had textbooks
and it was because i mean everyone has different learning styles but um engaging with information
um in real time um and and with others is how i learned best and so when i'm when i'm
going through a lecture with a professor and i'm learn i'm getting the the majority of the
information through lectures um that's how i learn best and so i don't need that to go home
and then read chapters on it when you only wanted me to gain one or two bits of information from uh
you know six chapters you want me to read um so my most engaging classes were the ones that
had the occasional pdf thrown into canvas but weren't the ones that i had regular you know
200 pages of reading a week so i mean so to me the cost is unnecessary because i never needed
those textbooks and that the information done in textbooks it's not how i glean information
i found that i also had stronger relationships with the faculty that were teaching those classes
because it's not just like you're being talked to like you're having an open conversation and like
one of my favorite classes that i've taken was criminology and we had one book and we didn't
really use it but it was like less than 20 dollars and it was like interesting stuff so like we would
just like look at it because it was just cases and studies but she would teach us in ways that like
we didn't realize we were learning we're like what are we talking about that's like actually relevant
but we ended up learning so much and understanding so much about like the ideas and theories that she
wanted us to understand but she would show us like clips from like criminal minds and
like all these random stories that had such like principles that were based in the content that she
could have easily just given us a textbook that said it but she wanted us to attach like a memory
with it and so we'll remember like when she tells us the crazy story of how she met ted bundy or
remember the story of ted bundy and like that was so much more beneficial than reading a book about
what he did yeah um i also think that and i again this might be more related to
some of my senior level courses that just happen to be smaller so about 30 to 50 students
because i can understand that with like a 200 student lecture hall it's
it's easy to or it's not easy to organize that and with attendance and things like that but
um and more with more manageable class sizes it kind of almost like right off
the bat kind of speaks to the professor if they have like a paper sign in or their exit quizzes
that count for attendance are on canvas instead of making you pay for top hat to just to log your
attendance because that's like it seems pretty simple and also like i remember because similar
to you i had a top hat class and an i clicker class and i was like these are literally doing the
same exact things but i had to pay thirty dollars for one and buy an iclicker for enough it's like
why don't we just use one of them like pick one um so are you suggesting like a campus like wide
commitment to one platform that would be great and it's just it would make and that seems like
it would almost make it easier for the professors too because i feel like there's a lot of options
out there but if they're they're given one they're taught how to use it and it's a simple one
so canvas does a lot of that right and canvas is capable of doing it i don't understand why
we don't use canvas because like all my quizzes for like even for my connect class that we do
like everything on connect our actual quizzes are on canvas and so like we literally just do
practice problems that are a completion grade so if you do them you get a hundred but the
quizzes are on canvas and that's like where you actually get grades and so like it doesn't
make sense to me why i'm paying 130 dollars for a program where i'm getting a completion grade when
there's a free program that i'm getting my actual like understanding grade right like that doesn't
make sense to me so it has a follow-up question so for some context in my experience i found that
professors that i have who are either currently enrolled in an education program or just recently
graduated from one so like grad students who are now teaching grad students who are teaching
professors who are now going through their phd process tend to be the ones that actually like
try to get away from textbook costs um one like personally one of my most interesting classes was
my intro to poli sci class two years ago where on the first day my professor was a phd candidate and
he said i was a philosophy undergrad and i think charging students for textbooks is morally wrong
and he said and i will not do it he says everything i will give to you or i will
point you towards a resource where you can get it for free and and it was honestly like that
dynamic like from the get-go that made class so enjoyable because like he through that like
simple gesture showed that he understood us and was willing to meet us like on our level
and he understood like our reality is that something that you guys kind of share
like yeah yeah trends yeah because sorry when my when like the professors make it
the same professor i've had she does um she does a paper sign-in there's exit quizzes on canvas
to ensure that you're like keeping up with the content and then she has her textbook at
the library so like she does as much as she can and she explains it to everyone on the
first day she was like i have these resources set out so that you can get them if you don't
want to pay for the textbook or if you can't and so yeah it's just that initial like oh thank you
like you understand and you're you were proactive about helping as opposed to the teacher who says
oh yeah all the homework's on connect and you're just going to cook clue until you
get them all right have fun it's like it just is an automatic disconnect and i'm less like
enthusiastic about what i'm learning because i'm like no connect i don't know i would agree um
one of the classes that you and i took together avalon legal foundations of planning
our professor held so many degrees he had a bachelor's a master's a jd and a phd and a phd
yeah gosh he knows texas and so yeah and i don't remember him explicitly saying it he might have
but he definitely made a point of like i pulled all the most important resources for you
on online pdfs here they are on the canvas folder um and through personal because of that i i took
more initiative to get to know him during office hours and after class and found out um
his philosophy on education and like talk to him because i was at that point considering being an
educator myself um and so being able to have this conversation with him really i agreed i developed
a better relationship but also i appreciated the content more because i realized he was going way
out of his way to pull the bits of information he thought was most important for us to learn
from all the right right and so it was a pretty incredible experience and i remember last year
writing him an actual note during open education week thanking him for setting a good example for
how all professors should be treating their course content if at all possible you know
all right um
so are you aware of resources that are available to students on campus that could
bridge this affordability gap um and then if you do or don't i guess do you have any
ideas on how they could be improved or better advertised i feel like i learned a lot today
yeah uh i feel like this flyer is really nice and i would like it to be given to all professors ever
um because like having a textbook in the library would be really helpful right um it's a ring cost
because usually i only use a textbook for classes for like when the test comes up then i'm like oh
i have to read this now um yeah which is kind of terrible but honestly it'd be better to come in
the library and like i'd be more willing to do it if it was in the library and like free um so yeah
yeah i mean i would agree i i wanted to bring up a piece of legislation that was
going on in our virginia general assembly um but when we took some students to lobby
for higher education and college affordability and i talked to them about educational resources on
our campus because somebody from another school had mentioned oh virginia tech's already doing
that i'm like well yes we are engaging in the conversation a lot thank you for
but thank you for noticing but um i was like but i still like to my knowledge it's still a handful
of books so i was like whenever i think about open education resources and talk to students about it
i'm always like but right now we really need to work on i keep focusing on these openly sourced
textbooks which are very important of course but i keep like i my my mind goes straight to that and
i'm like but we only have a handful we've got to increase the um the number that we have um
so it's important to be able to point students to the other kinds of resources online and that
they might find physically in the library to help with that because until we do expand the number of
books that are openly sourced that we don't want to stray away from what is available in other ways
which brings me up to this point i have not been good about bill tracking the season because it's
i've been so busy but um we we um so i can't tell you where this is because something's
already happened to it because it's crossover i don't know okay so let's pass the house in the
senate subcommittee um for higher education okay cool and it was supposed to be discussed today but
it was not because they discussed the budget so i assume it will be well this is a related budget
because um it's the open and affordable course content program textbooks can add thousands of
dollars the cost of college support um the virtual library of virginia yeah exactly
budget amendment to expand affordable textbooks and promote an outcome-centered approach to higher
learning so this would actually add state funding to uh providing these kinds of users that's
a budget amendment and i don't know where that stands yeah but we'll see because watch it's time
i think um i was relatively pretty aware of all the resources on campus but i've also
been involved in student government for four years now and this is an event that we're hosting so um
it's something that i've been made aware of just through that organization so students who um might
not have been involved in an organization that is passionate about this i don't know that they do
hear about it enough because i um have like i said have had one or two professors who've put their
textbooks in the library so that is like the only time i would have heard it in class i think so
um obviously i'm sure there's rules against making all the teachers put their textbooks
in the libraries but um there's actually a university policy that says the textbooks must
be in the library but they are not in the library well they are not submitted to the library so
really teachers just need to submit finding a way to enforce that so for any teachers watching this
well then something if they are required and there is a better way to enforce that um i know a lot of
times in terms of disseminating information to students um making it a required syllabus item
and obviously the syllabi are always a little cluttered at this point but it could i mean
this seems like something that would be incredibly applicable to a syllabus adding these there
are textbooks in the library let me explain a little bit about how how the library finds out
yeah about which books are assigned so we don't get syllabi from all of the classes right i'm sure
um it might be nice to do that and to know what people are signing yeah but we do get a list from
the bookstore and they provide that to us with the understanding that we don't send it anywhere
else and so if a professor tells the bookstore yes i'm planning on using this book um we will
know about it if the professor does not tell the bookstore i'm assigning this book or these three
books we will not know about it have some classes don't put it on the books yeah so it's quite a lot
like this on amazon right like you can google it or yeah and there are some books that yeah wow so
faculty are required to according to the higher education authorization act they are required to
um comply with university policy that allows students to know at the time of registration
how much their books will cost right so time of registration yes because there's a link there's a
link from healthy spa that goes to the bookstore this is how the university has decided to
implement it um there's a link on hokie spa that goes to the banner wherever you register that goes
to the bookstore and you're supposed to be able to look from there there's some system integration
so what what some other universities are doing is that they are more closely
linking course registration with symbolic icons that say um this
course is a low-cost material course this is a zero-cost material course this course costs 300
in course materials health our system does not do that that would be something that would be
wonderful um in my opinion yeah that would be amazing so yeah especially for electives and
things like that where you have the choice to choose like obviously required classes
you might have to make it work with required textbooks but if you were looking for credits
i would be looking for those lower cost credits like credits because i it was like after all
my friends were taking like astronomy but that textbook was like 300 so i was like i'll struggle
through bio 105. 1005 for 29 for two semesters with that textbook like so this is showing how
cost is affecting your decisions and what you stopped i could have known about astronomy
astronomers and if that was your preference right i wanted to take it right i couldn't justify 300
class times conflict and you're forced into the class so like that's half of my classes
issues i took airbag not because of a course like a material requirement but because chinese didn't
fit myself but if that's you know but then if i'd gotten into here my textbook was 300
i would have been you know stuck so right the lack of flexibility right it's important to shop around
before dropout week comes up like you need to be doing that so i would also say that there are some
people in in my circles have raised ethical issues with these this like marking and tagging like are
we driving students to lower cost courses are they choosing courses on the basis of cost um and wow
yes absolutely it's already happening yeah yeah i feel like so so are we i mean does this mean that
students who are less affluent or who are unwilling to borrow more money um are not able to
participate in certain fields so there are some pretty i think this brings up those issues
in a more visible way and people are really uncomfortable with with that but i don't
think that's a reason to not show what things function no i think that's until we have a more
solid solution long term where pretty much every discipline has um a good number of openly sourced
textbooks that are affordable at either no cost or low cost i think we need to be able to give
people the option even that there are our ethical dilemmas like it's better to have a short-term
solution that works for some people at least works in some way until we can have something that works
for everyone without any other ethical dilemmas i think also like being able to prepare for it like
i didn't get my syllabus for one of my classes to know which textbook i needed to like the first
day of classes right and like i could have been preparing and like i could have like i don't know
picked up extra shifts to like make sure that i'd be able to like buy it on time or something
just like know that like it's so like drastic sometimes because they're just like
oh we'll post it later and then they're like well you need this book like in two days
and you have no other option you have to buy it right now and it's like well here's like 500 you
need to spend in the next two days and you're like don't have 500 in the next two days and like i
feel like most of my classes like when i look at registration i've never seen the books on there
i didn't even know that very closely the link is in the upper right hand corner i think
it's it's not a integrated system in in the way that i think would be useful to the reader i
actually had a professor tell me that hell but it was a legal requirement of the university
to provide that information at registration and i think everyone in the class was like we were
just shocked and horrified that we were hearing this i mean it's good to hear from a professor
not someone outside the university but it would be nice to hear it you know somewhere more essential
administration saying hey this requirement put on us this is how we
uh make it available to you here's how you know about it here's what to look for every semester
to know your costs up front i feel like that would do an orientation on that note i'm gonna
just wrap up this part um we have a few minutes for questions i'd like to thank everyone here for
sharing their experiences so openly um so if there's anything anyone in our audience would
like to add on or comment on or ask about um we'd love to hear that right now right now
somehow messed up and it didn't go to the like
university like saying this is the book you need and he gave it to us like for free
wow and i was like thank you yeah it's a plastic cover yeah it's like a spiral bound
i don't know how they did it actually but they printed it at their oh there's machines that do
that my mom's job used to use okay yeah they like printed it and bounded their expense and every
student in the class got a copy yeah i like that they took the responsibility he's like i messed up
and i'm not gonna force you because of my mess up that's awesome he is an ethical professional
there's this long story about how huge he found the way yeah he made it work
yeah yeah i have a question actually about the slideshow that you had yeah um so there was uh you
had like a a business model for opennet sources and it said funding source was like one starts
what's uh what's that source where does that money come from some of the money comes from
foundations right now the money that we give to professors to create either books
or openly licensed video and virtual reality and things like that comes from the library's budget
we are doing a crowdfunding campaign this spring starting in the toward the end of march
because we would like to have a little bit of money in the virginia tech foundation
that's not tied to the university's fiscal year it's very important to be able to
say to professors yes you can write in the summer we will pay you half at the beginning and half at
the end um but we don't always know will we have a budget next year what will that budget be can i
promise you money and and so um yeah that money is coming right now from the university libraries um
and we're fortunate that it is because in a lot of schools there isn't any money to pay
professors to do this work and it honestly it's not very much money it's it's probably
it's probably more money than most people would get as a book advance but writing a book is hard
right but they do have the they have other benefits
of wealth yes yes they have their they have their cb and their dossier but they they also have
their they have their name out there they have students who are grateful to them
and somehow they do the math and they say you know what this is more valuable for me to give
than to try to find a way to monetize and it's more valuable for my students so people
who really care deeply about student learning are ones that are are getting involved and
um so when you meet those people please thank them because teaching is is sometimes thankless
um it's really fun um but it's um it's important to thank people when they um do things that are
valuable as it sounds like you did so yeah i wish one of the professors that had spoken
last fall on the panel had been able to join us because it was awesome to hear him talk about it
you know i don't know if he talked about if he was skeptical at first or just didn't know much about
it but once he actually understood the concept and the benefits to him he was like why didn't i
do this all along like this is awesome like um the suppressor you have now what a business professor
um so it's cool to hear him talk about like this is like i would do this for every class if i could
and like i hope all my peers recognize the value so i was like well share it with your peers dude
like tell them about it it's also really cool to have like a book written by like a person that you
can like tangibly like my intro to sociology class like dr hughes wrote our textbook and
we were just like he's like yeah i was just thinking this when i was writing this book
he wrote it with his wife and it was just like he's like actually knows this like there's no
doubt like he wrote it and like sells it on amazon we wrote a book in my arabic literature class um
that our professor had translated and so we were talking about differences from like how things
get lost in translation and she was like well i happen to know this is like a very long time
she's like not into my own horn and she was like yeah i guess i did the work on
this so you're gonna have to actually read because i'll know if you don't but that's
like it does it adds another layer to the learning process yeah definitely say well
what were you thinking when you said this like why did you why do you frame this
like this like my anthropology class last year our professor was able to track through like
his learning how close he was to like the founder of anthropology he's like i'm eight layers deep
into knowledge like through like personal connections with people and like the books we
read he was like yeah this is my friend from back in the day we do conferences together he's like oh
carl he's so nice i'm like what like this is like incredible to like just like it kind of reinforces
like the quality of the professors that like our university find to work for our university like
we're really like we should be more grateful with like the quality of education that we have like
everyone knows we're like good at academics but like sometimes we forget like how good and it's
like a nice refresher to like have a professor who like really could be doing more than just
teaching and they've decided to invest in like the future generations of what they were it's
like that like gets me really like i feel like more motivated in a class where they are like
i know that they could be doing something of like maybe more like since i do politics and stuff like
they could be working for like the government and like a very high job but they choose to be here
and educate students and like generations that will then go on to be those positions and like
it's way more valuable than just like yeah i was like okay now i'm here now you can be okay
all right were there any other questions yes so i want to ask if someone could donate the
book to library first yes yes so how about like is there any problems if towards the end if there's
something like that going around like if you want to leave the book like if you're after the
semester ends if you want to donate the book to this like in this box or in this place and then um
you can know like they can know what the consequence would be they would know that
if you donate the book it's going to be in library and it will be open to everyone
so future on uh students who take the same course can use it because most of the time
courses remain and books remain and some people don't know right if you go up to the circulation
desk really at any point and say i would like to donate this book um if it's if it's a book that
we need and you can say this is a book that's used for this course and i would like you to i
would like you to have a book holder for one cent because i know the way to get rid of it right
that's like the most painful i know i know when you spend so much money and they're
like two dollars at some point if there are 75 copies of something or nothing yeah
i think that at that point they would please but we do take textbook donations and how do you how
do students know to access that that would want to do that to borrow to take the book
sure that is the research yeah yeah so could we do it like as a part of as you collaborating in
the library and helping you guys get she's like oh we're going we're where are you she's already
planning an event i didn't know that either um yeah our time is actually up um but i want to
thank everyone for being here tonight and taking the time out of their schedule and um just coming
to talk and about this issue i learned a lot so i'm excited now i'm a little sad i guess but
mostly excited and please come out to reading now reading day that's
the other event i do open education week starting on the 19th so all right thank
you