LibAnswers

Send your instructor this letter and cc the Program Chair and Associate Dean of your program.

Dear [Instructor’s name],

I am emailing to express my support for the adoption or creation of Open Education Resources in your class. Post-secondary students in Calgary are facing financial hardship that impedes their access to education. Food insecurity, housing affordability and high tuition costs are real issues for Bow Valley College students. The high cost of textbooks is forcing students to make difficult decisions like:

• Going further into debt
• Putting their education on hold
• Trying to succeed in their courses without purchasing the required textbooks
• Choosing between purchasing groceries or textbooks

Fast facts about textbook affordability at Bow Valley College.

• In the Winter23 term, the total cost to students if every student were to purchase their textbooks for every course was $1,292,348.
• 51% of respondents to the Learner Experience survey (21/22 term) indicated they had tried to reduce their textbook costs (2021-2022)
• Stacie Baker, Manager Learner Financial Empowerment conducted a learner survey about financial wellness within our student population. 45% of those surveyed listed “books/materials/supplies” as the top expense they had difficulty paying for. When asked what BVC could do to help, top of the list was “lowering book costs,” “discounts on books” and “free online books.” (2018)
•  Students borrow an average of 8000 current textbooks from the library per term as well as borrowing older editions.

Open educational resources (OERs) are “Freely accessible, openly licensed text, media, and other digital assets that are useful for teaching, learning and assessing as well as for research purposes.” (Wikipedia) Benefits of OERs

• elimination of expensive textbook costs for students
• ability for instructors to customize textbook material to make it more student friendly
• access to textbook when course opens (no more waiting for funding to purchase the textbook, or wasting time looking for a used copy)

Ways to use OERs to replace textbooks and other course material

• create your own custom content
• adopt existing content from an open textbook repository
• adapt, modify, or improve existing content

For more information check out, Bow Valley College’s OER guide and “Considerations for instructors to help students save money on textbooks”.

Sincerely,

[Your name]