In March 2019 Florida’s Office of Distance Learning and Student Services published a follow-up to the 2010, 2012, and 2016 student surveys which have been a valuable source for many OER advocates. The new survey was conducted in spring 2018 and involved over 21,000 respondents. The survey’s findings were that:

 

• For the first time since the 2012 survey, overall textbook costs did not increase. Relative to 2016, only 43.8% of students reported costs of over $300 for the semester, with ten percent shifting from the “above $300” column to the “below $300”. This result doesn’t quantify the real savings, though, since it doesn’t specify whether students went from $305 to $295 or from $400 to $200 between the two surveys.
• Students increased efforts to reduce their textbook costs by finding cheaper vendors for new textbooks and by buying used copies or renting print or digital textbooks. It is worth noting that buying or renting from cheaper online sources and buying used, which all increased since 2016, could be threatened by publishers’ “inclusive access” plans that require students to acquire their materials from a single source.
• Students continued to report that they had not acquired required textbooks (64.2%), took fewer courses (42.8%), had avoided a course (40.5%), had earned a poorer grade (35.6%), or had dropped a course (22.9%) due to textbook expense.
• More students reported that required textbooks were not used in classes. In 2012, students had reported that an average of 1.6 textbooks were not used in class. In 2016, 2.6 textbooks per student were unused. In 2018, students said 3.6 of the students they had been required to buy were not used. Over a sample of 21,000 students, that means over 75,000 textbooks were purchased and not used. If the average price was $100, $7,500,000 in student funds were wasted. The survey suggests that courses switching to digital resources may account for this change – if that’s the case, instructors should stop requiring the textbook as well as the ancillaries.
• Students reported a much greater willingness to use digital textbooks. The question was worded around textbook renting (which also increased), but 41.4% indicated willingness to rent digital textbooks, which is a hopeful sign for digital OER acceptance. In addition, 57.2% of students said they used interactive practice questions and 44.8% used PowerPoint slide decks, suggesting that digital, interactive learning is making headway in both publisher and potentially OER formats.

 

Image source: All images from 2018 Florida Student Textbook & Course Material Survey, Donaldson, Opper, Shen, 2019. CC-BY.

 

This document by Dan Allosso, 2019, CC-BY-SA