5 Ways to Stop Being #TextbookBroke
by: Anders Gatten
It’s a time of new classes, new projects, and of course, new textbooks. By now we’ve all wrapped our first week of classes and if you’re anything like me you’re trying to weigh out whether or not you really need to buy the $120 worth of novels for your LITT breadth elective or if Schmoop can get you through it. Does it have to be the 10th edition of that $230 “Audio in Media” textbook? Has Pro Tools changed that much since the 8th edition?
If you’re anything like me, Textbook Season has a big impact on your wallet. To tie in with our #TextbookBroke campaign we decided to put together some resources to help you eliminate textbook costs from your new semester budget:
1. Using Open Educational Resources (or OERs for short): As defined by UNESCO, OERs are “any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them.” Many things can be OERs and most likely you’ve already had a professor use one in class. Ever had a teacher show a Ted Talk in class? That’s an OER.
2. Replacing textbooks with Open Textbooks: Open Textbooks are a kind of OER, meaning they are open for anyone to use for free online. Organizations like eCampusOntario have been working hard to help promote the creation of a wide variety of textbooks that can be used and remixed by professors to match their course.
3. Working with Sheridan’s Library and Learning Services: The Sheridan Library has a lot of tools to offer professors to help them make their course materials more cost-friendly. To get started, the can...
Check out Sheridan's guide for finding open textbooks online: http://sheridancollege.libguides.com/OER
Explore the thousands of journals, eBooks, and streaming videos available for their courses: http://library.sheridancollege.ca
Assemble readings from open textbooks and/or library e-resources in SLATE with eCOR: electronic Course Readings: https://sheridancollege.libguides.com/ecor
Faculty can talk to their Liaison Librarians to learn more about these options and next steps they can take.
4. Advocate to your profs about OERs: At the end of the day, the only way your profs are going to know about these options are if you tell them about them. Share this blog post with them or have them talk with their Liaison Librarian!
5. Participate in #TextbookBroke: People need to know how big the impact of textbook costs actually are on students, and #TextbookBroke is a great way to get the message out!