This evening we played with the neighborhood kids at our culdesac Halloween party! The Open Ed 2021 session we watched was entitled “Florida Virtual Campus Adding Textbook Cost Indicators to the State Online Course Catalog” and presented by several speakers. Rebel Cummings-Sauls began by explaining the Florida Virtual Campus initiative that provides support for students, educators, and administrators. The Open Florida program, Cummings-Sauls explained, seeks to provide open textbooks and information. Ashley Thimmes, Nashla Dawahre, Josh Hill, and Ujjwal Chakraborty were also speakers. Cummings-Sauls talked about the Textbook Cost Indicator idea and working group they started. The group approved a Zero Textbook Cost Logo to highlight the availability of OER resources. The zero textbook cost was shared across the state. Cummings-Sauls mentioned that this was the first initiative to include both postsecondary colleges and universities in the same catalog. Thimmes explained that fees to access portals are considered textbook costs. The workgroup created a set of “best practices for campus implementation” that is available online. The workgroup continued to work with administrators at all participating institutions to upload information about the courses to meet the data standards for textbook costs. All of the data that students view is validated by the system and agreed upon by the institution using the working group’s criteria. Josh Hill spoke about the student view and filtering courses by “zero textbook cost.” Hill also explained that the FloridaShine and FLVC.org websites have information for faculty. Hill also spoke about Hillsborough Community College and how their use of OpenStax saved millions. They are also soliciting student videos about textbook costs and working with faculty to design courses using OERs to work towards a “z degree” or zero-cost degree pathway for students. Ujjwal Chakraborty talked about the Florida State College at Jacksonville initiatives. They have developed as an institution “OER master courses” that can be recognized as zero textbook costs. Other courses use OERs but the homework platform has a fee. The institution offered 1,253 OER sections from spring 2017 to spring 2020 with an estimated savings of over two million! Chakraborty shared a flyer for an AA degree that is completely based on OER. The institution, Chakraborty mentioned, is working on better ways to search for and identify OER and zero-cost textbook courses. This and yesterday’s sessions have made encouraged me to think about writing a book with student contributions and then an accompanying instructor guide.
