Creating Accessible OER Textbooks for Higher Ed

I often ask myself, “Is the cost of the college textbook worth the information it contains? Is this book something I want my students to keep? What other ways can I provide reading material and resources to my students that reduce their cost — and allows them to retain ownership of the book into the their career?” I have found that I could do better by using my class notes and turning them into a textbook using Pages.

The Problem

Hanson (2023) shared some facts about the cost of college textbooks: 

  • The average price of a college textbook is $105
  • 20% of students who fail college courses say its due to the cost of the textbook and other course resources. 
  • Students report having to work extra to afford their textbooks. 
  • 66% of college students report that at least once in their college career, they went without buying the textbook.  

 

Oer logo

OER Basics

You may have heard of OER (Open Educational Resources) which are resources that are available to students that are completely free and licensed to be able to share freely. For something to be an OER - It has to meet the 5 R’s 

For it to be OER, the user must be able to: 

  • Retain - be able to keep the resource for however long they would like. 
  • Reuse - be able to use it in different formats, and use it year after year. 
  • Revise - be able to change the content and modify it for your own needs. 
  • Remix - be able to combine with other OER resources. 
  • Redistribute - be able to share it with others. 


OER is often used to reduce costs to students, which can have a major impact on their retention and stressors in college. TThere are already many OER textbooks available, a great list can be found at the University of Minnesota Open Textbook Project. Since OER allows you to Remix, you can also use these books as a starting point and add your own material to them. One way that you can provide this to your students is to use Pages for writing your own book, elevating your notes, or remixing existing OER while giving credit to the people who made the original versions.

To that aim, many professors may take their notes and turn them into their own OER, distributing them to students as a PDF at no cost.  

However, these kinds of notes are missing a few things:

  • They are not engaging. Textbooks often have pictures and diagrams that help students learn the materials. 
  • They are not accessible. A flat PDF may not have the accessibility features engaged. 

Using Your Own Notes to Make An OER Textbook

However, if you have word processing files that are notes that you distribute to students you could make them resemble more of the book experience, and meet accessibility guidelines by converting them using Pages. 

There are several book templates already in Pages.  

Pages also has the ability to add Accessibility features like descriptions for pictures, headings, and labels for content. These help with screen readers and assistive technology and can all be done easily in Pages. Learn the top 5 accessibility tips.

What Could it Look Like

Take a look at a plain text file below - the information is all there, but it is not engaging nor optimized for students with learning challenges.

Then look at the PDF or EPUB that was created from the same text in Pages (Example OER). The pictures all have descriptions, the headings serve to assist students to making sense of the content. As an example, I also added a few reflection questions at the end. I can create a color story that lets students know what are reflection or review questions as part of the book. I can even bold text that I want students to focus on. By mirroring textbook strategies I can assist the students in transitioning to using an digital book.

Other benefits to You as a Professor

  • You can self publish the book in the Apple Book store. This will produce analytics that show how many people have downloaded your work and where it has been used. This report could be shared as part of your annual report and document your impact.
  • Creating your own book allows you to make a book that paces directly with your learning objectives and curriculum and helps students focus on core content.
  • Adding visuals and pictures to your course notes assists you in refining ideas and creating explanations for students.
  • Creating your own OER releases you from worrying about textbook availability, unexpected new versions, or out of date texts.


Attachments

Attachments

Attachments

3 replies

July 18, 2024

This is an excellent post, Theresa, with great points and illustrations in the different types of OER documents.

As a college professor, I routinely observe students who choose not to purchase textbooks because of the expense. Because students in two of my courses were high achievers in project-based assessments, but did not score well in low-stakes reading comprehension quizzes, I anonymously polled those students to investigate how many had not purchased textbooks for those courses along with their brief reason why or why not. I found that approximately 32% of those students self-reported that they did not purchase the textbook. The primary justification was cost-related with one student stating that they had to "make the choice between purchasing a textbook or purchasing food for a month." A second popular response was that they intended to be present for all lectures and hoped to learn all the material through interactions with their professor.

These findings have inspired me to create free educational resources for my students. By creating my own resources, I can include only the materials most relevant for my courses and present them at the level at which my students can be successful. The addition of multi-modal content enhances student engagement with the materials and has resulted in positive learning outcomes. Students truly appreciate the effort to provide these resources for them and, in my experience, feel supported and are more apt to succeed.

I have also had students support future iterations of students by producing their own textbooks and educational resources. Students in my Music Appreciation course created mini-books on each music history period, to be adapted and expanded by future iterations of students enrolled in that course (incorporating proofreading and editing skills). These books are available for free on Apple Books.

Students in my Popular and World Music course create projects that are intended to support and expand the learning of future iterations of students as well, having created special topic presentations on materials I don't typically cover, study guides, and explainer videos for challenging concepts.

My sabbatical this Fall semester will be spent creating two new Apple Books for my students (and anyone) on Audio and Basic Acoustics. Sure, creating these educational resources is time consuming, but the effects they have on learning and student engagement is well worth the time invested! Thank you for this informative post illustrating what is possible.

July 22, 2024

Donald,

Thanks for your reply.. Do you have a screenshot of the results from the ibook store for your books.. where it shows number of downloads etc.. It is appropriate for someone's annual report to show impact? Would you be willing to share?

September 25, 2024

Sorry for the excessive delay. I'm longing for the day when we receive notifications when posts receive replies. Yes, it is possible to access download statistics through itunesconnect.apple.com.

A screenshot of the last 30 days looks like this:

 

Statistics from Apple Book downloads during the past thirty days.
I will be submitting a portfolio for promotion in January and intend to include this data. Let's hope others will see the merit in publishing these resources for others to use.

This post contains content from YouTube.

If you choose to view this content, YouTube may collect and process certain personal data. You can view YouTube’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/t/privacy" target="_blank">privacy policy here<span class="a11y">(opens in new window)</span>.</a>

This post contains content from YouTube.

You have rejected content from YouTube. If you want to change your consent, press the button below.