By SHANNON O. WELLS
As instructional design lead with Pitt’s Health Sciences Library System, Sera Thornton has a professional stake in connecting students with the textbooks and instructional materials they need to learn and thrive. Learning firsthand what many students go through to afford these materials, however, also has made it a personal issue.
“Textbook affordability is a hugely important issue to me,” she said. “I’ve had a student tell me that if they hadn’t had to buy textbooks, they would’ve used that money to feed themselves. I’ve had a student tell me that they were assigned a required textbook that cost $1,000. … I’ve had a student tell me that every term they choose what courses they take or don’t take based on which textbooks they can afford, not whether the classes are interesting or useful.”
Thornton finds true stories like these compelling evidence that the expense of textbooks and materials present a “blatant impediment” to student success and equity in education.
That’s where the Provost’s Committee on Open Educational Resources (OER), which Thornton chairs, comes in. Created by former Pitt Provost Patricia Beeson in 2018 following a Student Government Board resolution, the committee — composed of representatives from Pitt’s libraries, Teaching Center and University Store, and faculty members from all four Pitt campuses — seeks to increase OER awareness and usage at Pitt.
Thornton calls the 12-member group a “fantastic committee to be a part of, because everyone on it is so enthusiastic” about decreasing students’ textbook cost burden “while providing high-quality educational resources.”
Someone, she said, is always coming up with and implementing a new idea on how to share information about OER. Committee members, with free coffee in tow, have visited various locations on the Oakland campus, “talking to people passing by about textbook affordability and the existence of OER as a great option, and putting the word out about the grant opportunity.”
The committee has announced this year’s call for proposals for the Nancy Tannery Grant for Open Educational Resources (OER), which are due March 15. The grant provides funding for faculty projects meant to enhance the Pitt students’ educational experiences and provide faculty with the ability to customize their course materials.
Awardees are notified by the end of spring term. Visit the Tannery grant website for details on how to apply.
Formerly known as the Provost’s OER Grant, it recently was renamed for Nancy Tannery, the committee’s inaugural chair and former assistant provost, who passed away in 2021. “We’re thrilled to be able to honor Nancy’s memory in this way,” Thornton said.
Any Pitt faculty member is eligible to apply. Proposals range from authoring a new OER, adopt an existing OER for a course, or adapt existing OER material to make it fit an instructor’s course objectives.
“We’re looking for proposals for projects that will make an impact on courses and students at Pitt, be that a monetary impact through replacing a requirement for an expensive textbook, a positive impact on the quality or relevance of the educational resources available to support the students’ learning (without adding a student expense), or both,” she said. “Many of our funded projects hit both of those criteria.”
Improving options
Ten proposals were awarded last year, making a total of 72 awardees since the grant started, with $239,301 awarded since 2018. The committee’s data analysis from summer 2023 estimated that for every dollar Pitt has spent on the grant program, the OER efforts have saved students more than $12 on textbooks and other educational resources — a total of more than $3 million in estimated student savings.
“There are some assumptions built into those estimates, but we’re pretty proud of the scale of the impact we’re having,” Thornton said. “We’re excited to see what ideas people submit this year.”
Thornton explained that students still have their own textbooks when OER resources are used, and can access that textbook digitally or, if they prefer, print a paper copy at cost through the University Store.
“Either way, this is not a rental — the student can save their OER textbook to their computer, scribble notes in the margins, and use it for years to come, just as they would a textbook for which they’d paid a publisher.”
Students can legally share copies of their OER materials with friends or make improvements to them and re-share online for others to use, Thornton added.
Aside from the advantage of saving money, OER allows course instructors to edit the textbook when they find errors, inconsistencies or outdated information, which Thornton said are fairly common in purchased textbooks.
The course instructor also can develop their learning objectives first — based on skills they think are important for students to master in the course — and then customize an OER option around those learning objectives.
For example, they might find two existing OER textbooks about their subject online, download both and custom design a new textbook using relevant parts of each — possibly adding a new chapter where a topic is missing — that seamlessly supports the curriculum they’ve designed.
With publisher-purchased textbooks, instructors are often faced with choosing what Thornton called “the least of three evils”: basing course design on the textbook structure even if it’s not optimal for students or curriculum; using one textbook and telling students exactly what pages to read in what week, and what pages to ignore, because the book’s organization doesn’t coordinate with the course; or having students purchase multiple textbooks or paid resources to cover the entire optimal-course design.
Taking the cause to lawmakers
Prompted by recent experiences including paying $300 for one textbook, Clara Gilles, president of Pitt’s Student Public Interest Research Groups chapter, and around 15 other students, in the group launched a textbook affordability campaign this semester.
“Textbook affordability is an issue that impacts every student, no matter what campus they are on, what their major is, or their financial situation,” Gilles said. “We want Pitt to implement resources that allow students to see how much their textbooks will be before enrolling in classes for the semester, known as Course Marking.”
Several states, including Texas, Colorado and California, have passed legislation requiring universities to implement such programs that she said have been “very successful” in increasing price transparency for students.
“Since the price of textbooks and other educational materials impacts every student,” she said, “we found it important to work toward passing state legislation along with working with Pitt more directly to increase textbook affordability.”
The campaign group is busy collecting signatures for its Make Textbooks Affordable petition and collecting faculty sign-ons to show they support OER and other resources Pitt can provide to increase price transparency and expand campus OER access.
In April, the group will take part in legislative lobby days in Harrisburg and Washington, D.C., where members hope to talk to lawmakers about how textbook costs impact students and present them with the signed petitions.
“We are very excited to be traveling to D.C. in April,” Gilles said. “We hope it will show representatives how much textbook costs are impacting students and encourage them to pass national legislation that increases support on campuses for programs that allow faculty to switch to OER,” including grants, professional development, and/or course release for educators. “We hope that legislators will take action based on the amount of support that StudentPIRGs has been able to create around the country through the Affordable Textbooks Campaign.”
Seeking the source
Frank Wilson, assistant vice president for academic affairs at Pitt-Greensburg, and an original member of the Provost’s Committee on OER, said non-tenured faculty at the Oakland campus “have been the most willing to give us proposals to embrace the idea of open educational resources whenever possible. Our grant proposal is to help people develop those kinds of things.
“And I can tell you, on my campus, it’s led to some permanent effects,” he added, “where especially in our education program, multiple faculty over the years have been developing these kinds of resources for their teaching. And it’s become kind of a tradition. And I’m sure we’re going to have at least one serious proposal coming out of our education program this this year.”
Despite growing interest in OER materials, Wilson acknowledged that the need to use actual textbooks — paper or virtual, “rented” versions — remains, skyrocketing costs or not. “There are classes that you will always need textbooks for,” he said, adding that textbooks are “way overpriced.”
Recalling an introduction to sociology book for a class he taught years ago that cost $100 or more, Wilson said the price was particularly insulting given that the demographic and economic data it contained quickly became outdated.
“By the time that book is put together, that data is actually old,” he said. “And I thought, since we know where that data comes from, what I did in my classes was to start teaching students how to go to the original source.
“And that became the way I started teaching certain pieces of my sociology classes, and I saw no reason to make people pay for something that we should be learning how to do on their own,” he added. “And I think that students appreciated that.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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