Amariani Garcia
Lantern Staff
The Butler English Department has saved students over $500,000 in book costs, by creating and publishing an English Composition I and II textbook in 2018.
The idea to start an Open Educational Resources (OER) textbook came to be when Associate Professor of English Andrea L. McCaffree-Wallace came upon the idea at a conference and Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences Susan Bradley supported the idea. The idea of an OER textbook was pitched to the English Department and was voted in favor to move forward with the project for the upcoming semester.
Students have benefited by the publication of these books, according to the department.
Kayla Brown, a sophomore at Butler, never realized she saved such a significant amount of money by having an OER textbook. After sharing the data collected by the department, she was grateful for these changes.
“I never realized how much money books really cost until I came to college,” Brown said. “Butler is really making themselves affordable for students to receive their college degree and even more so by making their own books.”
Now, not only are Butler students saving money, they do not have to worry about paying for the book at the bookstore. The $40 fee is incorporated with tuition fees making it hassle free for the students and less stressful. Additional benefits found in the first chapter of the OER textbook includes information on Butler’s tutoring services, how to access Canvas and how to download Microsoft Office 365 free.
“The first way students benefit is through the obvious cost savings,” McCaffree-Wallace said. “They now spend $40 on a book instead of $200 on required English texts. However, there are less obvious benefits as well: students have access to their textbooks via Canvas before the first day of class and are using a book built by Butler English teachers, so it more directly applies to our curriculum and college than a publisher’s textbook.”
Along with students benefiting from OER textbooks, so do professors. The English department has received positive feedback about the textbooks from other departments at Butler. Professors are happy that students can pick up their book at the bookstore, so most students have their textbook the first week of classes. Rather than when students had to purchases their textbooks, many students did not purchase their textbooks until later in the semester.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Assistant Professor of English Jennifer Montgomery said. “Most of the information English instructors use for Composition I and II is widely available, so it seems kind of mean to have them pay lots of money that they could have found on the internet for free. I feel proud to be [apart of] faculty that developed something like that.”
Other departments have shown interest in developing OER textbooks as well in the upcoming semesters.
