Ensuring equity of access is core to the mission of Librarians- whether that is access to information, physical access to materials, digital access, or access to technology. So it is a natural fit for Librarians to provide leadership in creative methods to support student access to textbooks.

In today's episode we'll talk about the many ways that faculty can impact student access to textbooks and instructional materials–including Open Educational Resources (or OER), zero textbook cost (ZTC) courses and pathways, as well as the long-standing library reserves textbook lending program for students to use textbooks in the library.

You'll hear from:

• Esteban Aguilar, Electronic Resources Librarian, and Mt. SAC Liaison for the Statewide Open Educational Resources (commonly referred to as OER) Initiative, and Zero Textbook Cost (or ZTC) Library Coordinator, and Co-lead for the Library Initiative for Equitable & Affordable Learning, or LIEAL

• Monika Chavez, Mt. SAC's Career and Tech Ed Librarian, also a LIEAL leader, Co-chair of the Textbook, Instructional Materials, & Digital Equity Committee, and LIbrary Department Chair.

Resources:

• Library Initiative for Equitable & Affordable Learning: Empowering Faculty. Supporting Students. Advancing Equity. Learn more about OER and ZTC, ZTC Pathways, related professional development and funding opportunities, and how to get support exploring our options.
• Faculty Resources at the Library including Course Reserves (textbook collection), OER, and Class Sets Explore the many ways the Library and Librarians can help students in your classes access materials, improve student research experiences and outcomes, and that you can partner with the Library. https://www.mtsac.edu/governance/committees/tide/
• Mt. SAC Textbook, Instructional Materials, & Digital Equity (TIDE) Committee purpose, function, and additional support materials.
• Zero Cost and Low Cost Designations in the Schedule FAQ
• Recommendations for Adoption of Required Instructional Materials by TIDE
• California Community Colleges Open Educational Resources provides links to searchable OERs by discipline, transfer curriculum, C-ID, and identified gaps in OER availability
• Research:
• Jenkins, J. Jacob, et al. "Textbook broke: Textbook affordability as a social justice issue." Journal of Interactive Media in Education 1.3 (2020):1.
• Swain, B.K., Pathak, R.K. Benefits and challenges of using oer in higher education: a pragmatic review. Discov Educ 3, 81 (2024).
• Hughes, Jennifer, and Joseph Taylor. "Textbooks 101: What You Really Need to Know about Textbook Access Codes, Inclusive Access, Open Access, and More!." Association Supporting Computer Users in Education (2022).

Run Time: 44 min, 24 sec

To Find the full transcript for this episode click HERE

I just want to say thank you for the to the professors who do take the time to create a class that is zero textbook. I realize that it might be a little more work on their end or a different way of doing things, but it's super appreciated, I think, by everybody to have that level of accessibility, no matter who you are, where you are in life, or where you come from.

Welcome to the Mount San Antonio College Podcast. I'm Chisa Uyeki, a Mount SAC professor and librarian, and I'm pleased to be your host for this season. Our goal is to keep you connected to our campus by bringing you the activities and events you may not have time to attend to share the interesting things our colleagues are creating and innovative ways they are supporting and connecting with Mount SAC students. Join me as we explore Mount sac. Ensuring equity of access is core to the mission of librarians, whether that is accessing information, physical access to materials, digital access, or access to technology. So it's a natural fit for librarians to provide leadership in creative methods that support student access to textbooks. In today's episode, we'll talk about the many ways that faculty can impact student access to textbooks and instructional materials, including Open Educational Resources or oer zero text cost materials ztc, which can be for full courses or pathways, as well as the long standing Library Reserves program or Textbook Lending program which allows students to use textbooks for short periods in the library. We hope you enjoy

My name is Ren and I am studying Business Administration right now.

So have you had classes that don't use textbooks or have zero cost textbooks?

Yeah.

Yes.

And what kind of materials are faculty using instead?

Usually their own PowerPoints. Some of them use their own PowerPoints. I mean, they also did have their own textbook, but they just take the materials from there and kind of summarize it and then give it to us.

Do you feel like you're missing content when you don't have the textbook?

Not really. I think I prefer classes that don't use textbooks.

Can you tell me more about why?

Oh, because usually professors who don't use textbooks, I find that they tend to take information from a textbook and condense it in a way where it's like easier to understand for me than reading

it in the textbook. That's interesting. So did you understand about how you can search for classes that are zero cost?

Yeah, there's like a logo on the Mount SAC when you sign up for classes. When you look at the classes and you click into it, there should be a logo that has like a money sign on it that Tells you like, oh, this class don't need textbooks.

Have you used that before?

Oh, yeah.

Awesome.

I'm Janelle. I'm taking studio art classes and art history classes here at Mount sac. I actually already have my degree. I'm coming back to change my career path, so I'm continuing my education. I have. So I've had a lot of experience with books and class expenses and. Yeah. And materials, lots of materials, especially for the studio art classes.

Have you had classes that you've avoided buying textbooks for?

Yeah, I have done a lot to not buy textbooks, like splitting the textbook with someone else in class or trying to find it online somewhere on an illegal website or allegedly. Or going and checking it out at the library and waiting, you know, however long I needed to wait, or just not reading it and seeing how I can get by with just the lectures.

Hi, my name is Alexis. I'm a biology major and this is actually my first semester here. But I've been in school, like, college since 2024. I was at Citrus College previously, but so I've had like some experiences with having to buy like, textbooks and stuff and they're so expensive, it, like, it really hurts.

Hi, I'm Jenna Sebastian. I'm a second year student at Mount SAC studying psychology.

And I've had my fair share of not buying textbooks and buying textbooks because I tend to, with complete transparency, either avoid the classes that require a textbook or I'll often drop them because I just don't have, you know, the $80 to get them at the moment and

And yeah, I feel like a lot of other students do the same.

When you're looking for a class, do you specifically look for classes that don't have textbook costs?

Yeah, I feel like that's a big factor in which classes I feel like I would be better motivated in because, like, I feel like conveniency is like a big factor for me too.

So you were nodding your head as well?

Yeah. So while I was looking for my classes, I had to really make sure that I picked classes that didn't have crazy textbook costs because I kind of rely on financial aid and I hadn't been able to receive any yet from Mount SAC because I had to send my transcripts over and it was like a whole thing. So it was really, like hard to find classes in general. And then to also find classes I didn't have to pay crazy amounts for textbooks for was worse.

Yeah, I have a similar experience to both of you where I've not signed up for classes or skipped classes or Dropped classes this semester, signed up for a painting class. And I really wasn't thinking about it. And so the kit was like 200 or something like that. And I was surprised by it and I was like, okay. The professor gave us some options of how we can buy it little by little, but it would ultimately be a lot more expensive doing it that way and a lot more time figuring it all out. Luckily I was able to do it, but it was kind of like number one, a big surprise, so that was uncomfortable. And two, like, if you were to piecemeal it out, it would cost you more down the line. So it was kind of not great.

But that's always frustrating as well when it's something that makes it so that you pay less up front. But it ends up being more when you're the folks that need it to be less overall. So it's challenging. And materials you can kind of understand. It's hard for the school to like supply those for everyone. Can you speak a little bit to your experience with either open educational resources or the resources that are being used in classes you've taken that don't have any textbook class in terms of like quality or the types of resources and materials?

Yeah, I think there's been a lot of classes where you pay $100 for the book and you barely use it. And that's always really frustrating. And I have taken a few zero cost classes. One is the art history class I'm taking now. And I would say that it's even more value coming out of the way that this is done because it is curated. It's something that is specifically something we are reading. There are no pages being missed. It doesn't feel like, okay, I have this book that I have to carry around with me forever and what do I do with it or try to resell it or whatever so it feels more economical but also more efficient and something that is easier to use.

So I previously took a American history class and that professor was fantastic. And he offered us a free link to the textbook that he was using. And he gave us another option as well to purchase an extra optional textbook that we didn't have to use that like, you know, if we wanted extra material to read on, he would like let us use that. But anything that he talked about in his lecture, he would like, it was directly from the book and there would be like direct references like with quotes and pages and things like that. So it was really easy to find. And then because it was online, it was really easy to just go on even on your phone in class and like find where he's talking about it. So that was really, really helpful.

If you haven't visited the library before. We do offer some resources to help students with their textbooks. Faculty can give us their textbooks and we can make it available in the library for all students that are in the class. It's called course reserves, and you can use them for up to two hours within the library. We do have scanners available and by copyright fair use, you are able to scan just what you need as long as you don't reshare it with other with anybody else, right?

So don't put it on an open website. Use it just for yourself, and that's completely fine. Sometimes we have ebook licenses that not usually for textbooks, for like traditional textbooks, so not like your intro to math or whatever, but say you're taking a literature class. We may have that ebook of what the things that you're reading that you have to purchase in an ebook version that you can access online. Some of our ebooks have licenses of one user or three users at a time. Some have unlimited access with that. You do just need to sign in with your mount stack username and password in order to bring up, you know, the actual ebook on your computer to read it. The public library, again, sometimes we don't have something typically not traditional textbooks, but other kinds of course materials.

You may have access to a public library, sometimes in print, sometimes an ebook. And if that's something you're ever like, ugh, like that just seems really complicated. Just come by the library, we'll show you how to look. And we can also show you how to create online library accounts whenever it's possible for your local library. So what can you guys do about this whole situation? Right? It's complicated. There's different stakeholders. There's authors, there's publishers, there's the bookstore, there's the faculty, there's campus administration. But you guys are the ones that it's affecting the most.

So you should have a say in the culture that we're creating on this campus. So I have a few recommendations. As faculty here on campus, we work with other faculty and many of them are very passionate about helping students. They want the best for students. They may not know that open educational resources are even a thing. Others, they may have other reasons of why they are less interested in taking a look at this. Maybe they're stressed, they're overbooked, they don't have time to switch their classes or for whatever reason. So that's where your voice has Particular importance because faculty listen much more to students than they do to us.

Talk to your faculty member. Email them some of the different options that you can give them is, hey, do you have an extra copy? Can I use it? Can you put it on course reserve in the library? They may or may not know, especially if they're adjunct faculty. That means they're part time here. They might not be aware of all the resources that they have access to. You can always ask, can I use an older edition? Older editions are often cheaper, depending on how they're using the textbook. That may be an option for you, definitely. Shopping around. I heard some people do that and that's definitely a good thing to do.

The other organization that I recommend is called spark. SPARK Open, I think is their official name. This again is a national charitable organization. Their focus is about sharing knowledge as a human right. Why Open matters. They include a lot of research and information about how textbook costs affect students, examples of how campuses have made changes. You can look to them for ways that we might be able to find examples out there. And also things like webinars, organizing and advocacy resources, things like that.

With open educational resources, what's happening is that authors are getting like an upfront cost. Some do write their own textbooks for free, which, like, we're not saying that people should have to get, should have to write textbooks without being paid, because we do think it's important that people are paid for their work. But one of the things is like getting paid like a lump sum. And then what they say is, they say, you know, they put this license on it, and they say anyone who wants to use it can use it for free, distribute it online, and they have like, certain permissions that they'll give. But basically it means that students can access those textbooks for free, Right? So you can get it for free online, and then they sell them for like a little bit like above what the cost of manufacturing it is just to help support, like, authorship. And this is done through Rice University in Texas. So they're the publisher for this. So it's high quality, peer reviewed.

I know at least hundreds of institutions or universities and colleges are using it. The UCs use it. Harvard uses them. MIT uses them. Community colleges across the country use these textbooks. They are high quality. So we're encouraging faculty to adopt those ones. Also, the state of California has invested millions of dollars for community colleges across the state for faculty to write these types of textbooks.

So we do have some on our campus. So art, history and history are making their pathways so that people can get an entire degree without having to pay for textbooks. They're hoping that it will start launching in fall, and then we're hoping that more departments will come on board. But it's. Yeah, it's art history, history. There's a certificate in computer Information Systems. And then Technical theater is also working on a certificate as well. Oh, and social justice, which is underneath the sociology department.

Hi, Monika and Esteban. It's so nice to have you all with me. I appreciate you taking the time.

Hey, good morning. Thank you for having us.

Yeah, good morning. Happy to be here. Happy to talk.

Awesome. So I'm excited for us to talk today about access to instructional materials and textbooks and some about the impact that faculty can have in increasing affordability for students. But I want to start with what we know about first day access to materials for students, whether it's textbooks, lab manuals, home homework sets, or other instructional materials. Monika, could you share what the research tells us about first day access for students?

So first day access is one of the strongest predictors of student success. Studies show that students perform at higher rates. They do better in the assignments, especially the earlier assignments. So the first, second, and third week type of assignments, while there hasn't been a definitive reason for this, the general consensus is that if students have access to their textbooks, they're able to start earlier. They're able to get a head start. And of course, the assignments and different things required of the class are linked to those textbooks and instructional materials. So having access to it is fundamental. But oftentimes students have delayed access to those materials, which is one of the reasons why the state of California has instituted something called burden free instructional materials, which requires colleges to give first day access to students for instructional materials.

So the state has very generously invested into open educational resources because those are free and open materials that faculty can use and oftentimes near the same type of textbooks that are published by traditional publishers. So. Yeah, so having that first day access shows that students are better able to perform in their classes and then are more likely to stay in their classes because they're performing well versus dropping out because they, you know, either didn't have access to something and couldn't complete an assignment or whatever. The reason is if it's a 16 week class or whatever week class, having, you know, not having access for one or two weeks can make a big difference for success.

Sure, that, that makes sense. And then even more so probably for our short term or intercession classes. Esteban, knowing how important it is for students to have that first day access. Can you talk about Monika mentioned burden free access? What are some of the burdens or barriers that students have in accessing resources?

So students face a mix of challenges and barriers when it comes to accessing materials, whether it be financial, structural, technological, things like that. So let's talk about, I guess, like maybe the top three, four, five barriers that students may face. The first and foremost is going to be financial barriers, right? A lot of times things like textbooks, access codes, your test banks can be prohibitively expensive for students. And students may outright skip buying or delay buying those materials, causing them to immediately start to fall behind on day one, especially when there are competing costs like housing, food, childcare, gas, transportation, what have you. So financial barriers really are the number one barrier for students accessing course materials. But then there are other things too, right? You have to think about things like technological barriers, the digital divide, so to speak. Students may not have access to reliable Internet or a reliable laptop or anything like that. And so them making sure that they can access those on the first day, that can be a barrier, right? Because they may have to come to campus and use our computers or they have to pick up a laptop from us.

So having materials available in multiple modalities, which oer allows for, which I'm sure we'll also talk about later, can help reduce that barrier. And then also just competing responsibilities can also lead to barriers for students. And what I mean by that is work can get in the way, caregiving for a family member can get in the way, and just other responsibilities of life can prevent students from being able to access the materials that they need in a timely fashion. As such, as Monika mentioned, that burden free, having access on the first day can help mitigate those issues because they don't have to worry about, oh, my book's gonna come in late, or I have work on Monday, and now I can't make it to the bookstore at school to buy my book or anything like that. So again, these are just kind of some of the barriers that students can face. And we could go into a whole litany, a whole host. We can talk about accessibility, we can talk about platform restrictions, but really that's what the core barriers are. Your financials, your technological, and just your life kind of catching up with you.

So, Monika, a big component I'm hearing of accessibility is affordability. What can faculty do to impact textbook and instructional materials cost?

So one thing which I already mentioned but is open educational resources. Those are free for students to access online. They can also be printed. So we know that There's a lot of students who still prefer having print textbooks. OpenStax. They provide printed copies that can be sold at the bookstore, but other ones can also be printed, maybe through the local print shop that we have at Mount Stack. Or students can opt to print it out themselves as well. So there's different options.

The flexibility of OER allows for different formats. The other thing that faculty can do is look into library license materials, which is something that any librarian should be able to help with. We recommend that you talk with either someone from Lyle or your librarian liaison, and they're listed on the website. But there's lots of materials that the library accesses already that students can get free access to. So while it's not something that is free to everyone, the open public or the public, it is something that students can get free access to. One thing that we really encourage is telling the bookstore as soon as possible about what you're adopting. This gives them more options, including getting access to the used book market. One thing that we've learned is that because our spring semester starts so late in comparison to other colleges, that our bookstore isn't able to get as many used copies as other places are.

So if you adopt the book as early as possible, maybe even letting them know that you're committing to that book for the next year or two, this gives them more power to buy those used textbooks early on so that they're not waiting until after everyone else or every other college has already received the used textbooks. Another thing, too we're looking at is when you decide on a book, see what formats are available. We've noticed more frequently that textbooks are not always available as print textbooks anymore. So, for instance, at the library, there are many textbooks that we can't get access to because even though it's actually available in print, publishers will not sell it to us. They will only rent it out to students. So the model is becoming more complicated and, you know, there's a lot of different pieces. But if you ever need help, please feel free to talk to us at the library.

I was going to mention that, Monika, that when you were saying we. In terms of suggestions, it's not just the librarians or those folks who are doing Lyle, but Textbook Instructional Materials and Digital Equity Committee, which you co chair. So thank you for that and thank you for that work. I did also want to mention what you were saying made me think of which I. I don't know, that all the faculty know is that if you adopt a textbook and don't do it through the bookstore, Our students, like veterans and folks in eops who might get textbook vouchers, won't be able to purchase them if either you're doing it through another outlet. But anything else than the Mount Sack Bookstore, that can also be a barrier. Thank you for all of those opportunities that we know faculty can have to increase accessibility for students. Monika mentioned a little bit about oer.

I'm wondering, Esteban, if you could tell us some more about open educational resources, how they work for faculty, what's so great about them. And then also in March, I know we had OER week and around campus there were some signs that were myth busting for oer. So if you could speak to some of those myths that might continue and talk about the quality and level of OER that is available now, that'd be awesome.

Yeah, for sure. So, right, OER stands for Open Educational Resources. And that can mean a lot of things, right? Basically, OER are any type of educational materials that are either in the public domain and freely available, available or are under copyright, but have an open license applied to them. Now, what is an open license? An open license is typically when we say that we're talking about a Creative Commons license. There are different kinds of open licenses. The most prevalent is a Creative Commons license. And when you have one of those licenses applied to your work, that grants users of that work certain permissions. And there's something called like the five R's of OER and basically that's retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute.

And those are generally the permissions that these open licenses give you. So they give you permission to make your own copy and control content of that copy. It allows you to reuse that material, whether as is or revise that material, meaning you can adapt it, adjust it, modify it, improve it, right? So that it's more reflective of your teaching style of your students and just more generally relevant to the content you want it to be. It allows you to remix, right? Meaning you can combine it with different materials that are also openly licensed. Okay. To create something new. Or again, it allows you to redistribute, meaning you can share copies of that content, of the revisions that you've made, the remixes that you've made for free. Okay? So that is basically what oer.

And again, a lot of times people will think OER means certain things, that it's only online materials. That's not true. Right? OER materials generally can be found online just to the nature of how they are. But as Monika was mentioning earlier too, right? There are print options available for OER for at cost, meaning if a student wanted that physical book, those open licenses give students permission to print those books and use them, retain them and share them if they wanted to. Okay. Same with instructors. But it's also not just textbooks. Things like your ancillary materials.

Right. Test banks, quizzes, assignments, presentations, a canvas course. Right. An image that you create if you wanted to. You can put an open license on those things and share them for others to be able to use. And there's your oer. Okay. And OER are helpful, right.

And how they work differently for students and faculty. For students, right. The big benefit is you have multiple options of modality and free burden. Free. Right. That's what we're talking about. Students don't have to pay taxes, these materials. So the media access that we've already talked about, all of those are the benefits for students, for faculty, the benefits are that you can really curate OER to fit your specific needs.

Okay, so if you are looking at a traditional textbook and you think, you know, some of this material is really great, but some of it's also not really relevant or it seems outdated. So I don't know if I should use this. Well, if you come across that kind of issue in an oer, you have the ability to make those changes. Okay, depending on the license. Right. Because some licenses do say non derivative, mean you have to use it as is. But we generally don't like those kinds of licenses because the whole idea of OER is openness and allowing people to be able to make those modifications. But one of the things you mentioned earlier, Chisa, too, was like myth busting.

Right? We had Open Education Week and our team, Lyle, put up different signs around campus with QR codes that kind of led to myth busting. Maybe the quality of OER isn't that great. Well, that is something that has been perpetuated over time. Right. And the answer to that is, look, yes, of course people can make something that is of low quality, but that is absolutely true of traditional textbooks as well. That is not something that is only unique to open education resources. And the counterpoint to that too is that more and more, the OER movement is growing massively. The state of California gave all community colleges thousands upon thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop OER and ZTC pathways.

All that means is that we have community college instructors, we have people who work in our realm developing quality materials for free to use. And all these materials can be found by going to the Open Educational Resource Initiative through The asc. So the state level, Right. The Academic Senate for all the California community colleges. If you visit their website, they have the oeri, the Open Educational Resource Initiative. They have a curated list by discipline of materials that have been created by faculty, for faculty. You can look up by your CID number. You can look it up by discipline.

And these are materials that, again, are, we know, are of quality because they're made by people like us. Right. Fellow community college instructors, for the classes that we teach. Now, that also talks to another myth that people have about oer, which is there's just nothing available for my discipline. Now, of course, nothing exists for everything. There can be a lack of material in some areas, but that is becoming less and less of a problem as days go by because of initiatives that are, like, happening right now from the Chancellor's office at state levels, just grants in general, People are developing more and more materials for different disciplines. Again, you really want to think about how OERS can benefit your students. And again, I want to come back to how you can adapt and modify oers.

You're not beholden to what the publisher puts out and using strictly that you are able to make the modifications that you need. Now, I'm going to do a shameless plug here in this podcast. If you are interested in wanting to do and work on oer, like Monika has said, you can reach out to us on Lyle because there is funding available for us to be able to help pay instructors to do this work. Okay. And that's something that we want to acknowledge, because this is work and it does take time. And we want to be able to help incentivize instructors to be able to take on this work because it is important. It is important. And, you know, we want to just make sure that the work that you're doing does not go unacknowledged or unrewarded.

Right. Or uncompensated. So that's my shameless plug. Right? If you are interested in doing more of this, we can help because it is important and it's beneficial for faculty, for students, for the academic community at large, because whatever you get, whatever you make gets put out there and it can continue to be built on.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Esteban. So Lyle, which is the Library Initiative for Equitable and Affordable Learning, is the program that you were describing in which faculty can be supported with funds to create or adopt oer. Right? Yeah. So I really love the tagline for Lyle. Empowering faculty, supporting students, advancing equity. Can you all share some of the ways that the work of Lyle has accomplished these goals for sure.

Yeah. So Lyle is our little library team. It's myself, it's Monika, it's Todor librarians. Ellen Caldwell from Professor in Art History. She is also a member of our team. She serves as the ZTC faculty coordinator, whereas I'm the librarian. ZTC coordinator. She's the faculty coordinator.

And then our dean, Dr. Romelia Salinas, who kind of are doing this work. And you're asking how the work of Lyle helps accomplish the goals of that tagline. Lyle has a few goals that really do help support this work. We support students access to affordable learning materials. That's one of our main goals. And by doing that, we help help support students and we help advance equity. Because when materials cost less, when students have access to affordable materials, it's more equitable.

They have that first day access that we've talked about. They're saving money so they don't have to make those hard choices between gas, housing, textbook materials or anything like that. And they're getting better grades. Right. As Monika talked about in those studies, that when they have access to those materials, they can get better grades because they have that first day access. Now, when it comes to supporting faculty, we do a few things. We have developed professional development workshops, okay. That are about the basics of oer, about how you can keep your open access materials anti racist.

It's called Open for Anti Racism. Ofar we have one of those workshops. We've done multiple flex day workshops on things like OER and AI Copyright basics. Right again, OER basics. So all of that is a way to empower faculty to learn about open education and how they can adapt them, how they benefit students. And we just generally serve as a support system for that. Whether it's an instructor who is interested in maybe creating something, what are the options? Where can that be housed? How does that done? How do licenses work? Right. We are just trying to educate the campus, trying to educate faculty, trying to educate students.

And that's really what we did in Open Education Week where we set up up tents to talk to people, to show how we can empower them, how we can support them, how we can help build this. Because this is something that we have been working on for a long time. Monika and myself in previous jobs and here at Mount sac, we've been doing OER work for quite a few years. And so I don't want to call it like a burgeoning movement because it's something we've been working really hard on for years and years. And just we Want to continue to grow it.

Thank you so much. Esteban. Monika, I wanted to ask if you could talk a little more about ztc. What it is, what ZTC courses and pathways are and sort of the how and why for Mount sac.

So ZTC stands for zero textbook cost. It's the wording that we use one because we hope that it's clear and then also because it is what the state uses because there is a requirement for the California Community Colleges and the CSU and their ask that the UC also do it as well to mark classes in the online schedule of classes that have zero textbook costs. So that could be something that's either no textbooks are required, so there's zero textbook cost. It could be something that's OER where the textbook is available for free online. It could also be something like library license materials. So while there is a cost for the library to pay for those materials, it is free to the students. And that's what's most important is there's zero cost to the students. So there's other things too that could be used such as having a class set of textbooks.

So if there is a textbook for every student and they don't have to pay for it, that would also be considered zero textbook cost. And then additionally they like something in the public domain. If materials that are utilized that are online that are free, those ones are too. What we do caution with is if you're using online materials that are copyrighted and they aren't considered or they aren't open educational resources, is that technically the the copyright holder has the right to take down those materials. So that's why we encourage the open educational materials because with those licenses you are allowed to retain a copy for yourself. So even if someone takes it offline, you still have that backup copy for yourself as well. Here at Mount sac, I think we have, we're trying to figure out the exact percentage of faculty that are using OER. Right now we're at between, I think we're between 15 to 20% of classes are using OER.

The way that we get that information is through a smartsheet that the instruction office fills out. So we highly encourage you to fill that out because that helps students know that your class has zero textbook costs and it also helps us know that as well because we have to report that out to the state.

So if you're a faculty member, you may be using zero textbook cost materials, but you haven't told the instruction office. So that's when they would want to fill out the smartsheet yes.

Yes.

Okay. And then after they fill out the smartsheet, it shows up in the schedule of classes, correct?

Yes. We recommend that you talk to somebody from Lyle or if you know somebody that has moved over to open educational resources. We think that's a great way to get started, just understanding what time is invested because we do recognize that this takes more time than adopting a traditional textbook. Or it can take more time, depending on which ones that you choose. We have workshops, we have stipends, we have one on one support where we can look up different textbooks that you can review to see whether or not you're interested in it. We can help you find different rubrics that can help you assess if the textbook is best for your classes. Yeah. We highly recommend looking at what classes have already been moved over to open educational resources across the state.

The state provides that information. Additionally, in the past, we were focused just on individual classes, so having that class move over. Now the state is, is encouraging colleges to create zero textbook cost pathways, which means that a student could take every class and not pay for any textbooks.

Esteban, did you have anything you wanted to add to what Monika shared?

Yeah, yeah, like Monika was talking about. Right. The state gave. And like we mentioned earlier, the state gave all the community colleges a bunch of money to develop these pathways. And this is nice because again, as Monika said, it allows the students to be able to complete a degree or certificate without having to pay for any instructional materials. Okay. And that may sound like a big accomplishment, and it is. But one of the things we have to keep in mind is it's ztc.

Right. And so if you're an instructor and you're listening, you think, oh, I'm interested, but that sounds kind of like a lot of work. I have to develop all this oer. No, you don't have to develop all this OER because it's ztc, which is a little bit of a lower barrier than oer, because as Monika said. Right. It can be something like your college library's materials. Right. We can buy a class set or ebooks enough to cover all of the students.

All that is to say you don't have to create a textbook or create anything to be able to get to ztc. And I wanted to give a big shout out to some of the people who have already been working on these pathways. Like Monika said, our first ones are going to be launching in fall of this year and we're looking at cis. We have Barry Andrews, who created a telecom certificate, so major shout out to him we have Ellen Caldwell and Mary Maguire and Alexander Criola and Phoebe Millerwhite who are working on an art history one. We have Susannah Ceballos who worked on a sociology one. And then we also have Ali Fricker in history who's created one that will also be launching in the fall. So big shout out to kind of like our first quote unquote cohort. That was the first round of grants that we applied with the state.

They got approved. And of course we have more coming on. Some more from art history, some more from regular history. We have the theater tech coming along and then we have a bunch of individual faculty people like the world, languages from music, from math. We have a lot of great instructors that we're working with and we're really, really excited to continue to build these pathways and hopefully get more. And those are those funding opportunities we were talking about earlier. So yeah, if any of the listeners are interested in, please speak to us.

So you all will support faculty in getting that funding? It's not something they have to figure out on their own.

Exactly right. They can have a conversation with us. We'll talk about a plan and we'll see how we can help them get funded to complete this work.

Awesome. Thank you. The final program I wanted us to talk some about is what I think is the longest running textbook accessibility program that the library is working on and has been working on, which is is reserves or the textbook collection. Can you tell us more about this program which provides access to textbooks and instructional materials and what is included?

So the libraries are. One of the library's main goals is to provide access to information and of course that includes textbooks. So we provide access to thousands of textbooks that are required across the campus. Unfortunately, we don't have a dedicated budget for our reserves program, so we do rely on faculty donations or student donations to keep our reserve collection continuing.

How does it work for faculty and then also for students if they want to access?

So for faculty, we have a form that's online and in print. We ask that faculty fill it out and then provide the information about the book and then drop it off with us at the library. We'll then process it and make sure that it's available for students who can check them out for two hours at a time for use within the library. So while the library textbook reserve program is incredibly important and an asset for the campus, we do recognize that only having a few copies in the library doesn't equal equity. Having students maybe wait for another student to be finished with it, that is a stopgap and not a solution. So we do encourage faculty to give us copies so that we can provide that access, but we recognize that that's not fully inclusive. So we're looking into something called class sets, which is I guess, kind of an obvious name, but it's class sets of textbooks where a whole class could check it out and then that would meet the requirements for ZTC because every student will have access to that textbook. So just in case the library reserves do not technically count as etc.

If it's only one copy for multiple students, it needs to be one to one where a student has their own copy for themselves. We're also looking into other materials that are needed for classes. So we have textbooks, of course, but we are also doing anatomy models. We've been checking out calculators. We're looking at other items that are needed for classes because we recognize that textbooks are of course important, but other items are required for classes and those can also be a financial burden for students. We want to have as much access to those different types of materials as well possible.

So it sounds like the class sets are an option. We have to be able to purchase a book for each student who is enrolled in the class. You might want to also do reserves at the same time. So a student might have their book, have left it at home with reserves that can come into the library, check out that resource for a couple of hours and use it in the library. I don't know that you mentioned. Also we have scanners in the library so students can scan a chapter if that's what they need, or say they're working on math problems and they didn't finish the set, they can scan the rest of that set. And that's actually right, our. Our largest checkout is a check our checkouts of textbooks.

So that reserve or textbook collection program is one of the ways that the entire faculty is really in the library is really committed to supporting students. So I have so enjoyed talking to you all about this. I know there's so much more to say and you all have done a lot of. And I hope that this piques interest for faculty to figure out ways that they can contribute to reducing costs for students. Did you have anything else you wanted to add?

Yeah, just thanks for inviting us to have this conversation. It's really important because I think one of the things that we know is that we're very busy folks here at Mount Sac. And even though Monika, myself and the team try to do our best to get the word out, sometimes things can be missed. And so hopefully this helps kind of spread awareness of the work that we're doing, the importance of it, and basically how you can use the Lyle team as a resource and a support system in your OER journey.

Thank you both so much. If you go to the Show Notes, you'll find links to all of the resources that were mentioned and more information about OERs about how you can help reduce costs and the Lisle team and their work. Thank you for listening to the Mount San Antonio College Podcast, brought to you by Mount sac's POD Office and created in partnership with Avant Haüs Media. Original music created and edited by Nira Azira. Be sure to check out our growing library of over 230 episodes and let us know your thoughts. You can reach me chisauyeki at C U Y E K I mountsac.edu. wishing you an amazing year and happy listening.