Free text experiment a success, say UGA students, faculty

Faculty and students in a University of Georgia experiment with free digital textbooks say the experiment worked. 

Students in two UGA introductory biology courses got the free textbooks last semester and this semester. Surveyed afterward, most said the free digital text from OpenStax was as good as or better than a traditional biology textbook.

“For us it was like a proof of concept,” said Eddie Watson, director of UGA’s Center for Teaching and Learning.

The concept, he explained, was simply that students in large classes might cumulatively save a lot of money with a free digital textbook.

The experiment was part of a "Complete College Georgia” incubator grant program of the University System of Georgia, designed to make attending college more affordable, and therefore improve graduation rates.

The state gave UGA a $25,000 grant to try out the free text, used by biology professors Peggy Brickman, Erin Dolan and Tessa Andrews in a two-course biology sequence, with the help of So Mi Kim, a graduate student and instructional designer. Kim worked with the biology professors to reorganize the courses and tailor the OpenStax textbook to the UGA course requirements.

When nearly 700 students completed surveys following the courses this fall, a big majority said the free digital textbook they used was as good as or better than a regular print textbook.

Only 14 percent of 673 students who responded said the OpenStax textbook was of lower quality than other textbooks they have had; 65 percent said it was about the same, and 21 percent said it was of higher quality.

The students did have some complaints. The book could be slow to load, and searching through it was sometimes unwieldy. Reading on a computer gave some students eyestrain, and some said they just like having a paper copy in front of them.

But those shortcomings seemed to be outweighed by the positives. The digital textbook was easily accessible, they said, and students liked the fact that they could print out individual sections or chapters if they wished.

They also liked that it was free, saving each student $97, not counting the possible money they might have recouped by reselling the textbook at a lower price.

Estimating that a little more than 2,000 students a year take these courses, that adds up to a cumulative savings of nearly $200,000, Watson figures.

The cost of textbooks is an important part of what students pay to go to college, he said.

Forty percent of the students who took the biology courses said they have trouble paying for textbooks. More than half said they pay more than $300 per semester for books, and 21 percent said they paid more than $400.

Many students say they sometimes don’t even buy required textbooks; they’re too expensive, and they’re often unnecessary to pass the class, more than half the students in the survey said.

Nearly 60 percent said they rarely use them.

Watson expects to see more courses with free textbooks, and instructors using other kinds of free resources in UGA classrooms as well as different and more active learning models.

“It’s promising. There’s lots of opportunity,” he said. “We know that there’s reasonable quality content out there.”

There’s more involved in switching to a free digital textbook than just switching from one to the other, Watson said.

The change required some redesign of the course.

“The big challenge is for faculty to have the time and support to engage in this,” he said.

The biology text experiment worked because of faculty members, he said, beginning with Brickman, who last year won UGA’s top teaching award. And the teachers had help from a top graduate student, Kim, he said.

“We have a fantastic, well-motivated graduate student coupled with a fantastic, well-motivated faculty member,” he said.


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ORIGINAL: On Line Athens

By Lee Shearer
updated Saturday, January 25, 2014