CAMEX questions answered: Open learning/access

This week's question from CAMEX is about open learning or open access course materials. For the short and direct answer to the question, read only the first paragraph. For the longer and more complete answer, read the full text.

Q. How much impact will I expect from the open learning component of digital delivery?

A. My expectation is that open access course materials (OACM) will grow to probably 10% of the course material market over the next several years. However, as with much of the digital movement, the focus is on the largest textbook adoptions where the impact will be greatest. That means the spread of open access textbooks could affect college store revenues -- which in turn translates into an impact on the financial aid and student services budgets on many campuses.

As an anecdotal example, I heard from one community college yesterday where the administration was apparently surprised by the financial impact that occured to the store's contributions to the institution's budget this spring when some faculty moved their large textbook adoptions to an OACM option. We heard a similar story last year from another large university where the move of one of their largest textbook adoptions to a free, online OACM option had a net impact of close to US$1M on the financial aid budget. OACM is likely here to stay, and so campus administrations should begin to plan for that to have some financial impact.

The open access movement has some strengths and weaknesses. On the strength side, it is an active approach to reducing the cost of course materials. Like the dot-com and real-estate bubbles before it, the textbook and tuition bubbles cannot keep going up forever. At some point these bubbles will pop and the models will have to change. The OACM movement, whether by design or accident, will focus greater attention on the interconnection between these two bubbles. The supporters of the OACM movement have been very vocal, aggressive, and active in getting changes in legislation and grant support. They have been very good as a movement in getting their point heard and supported. Unfortunately, this is not always done with accurate information.

On the weakness side, much of the OACM movement has yet to prove itself as sustainable over the long term. Will grant money and federal support continue forever? Again, while there are very notable exceptions, much of the movement has challenges with quality control and accessibility for students with disabilities. The latter is a challenge for several segments of the digital course materials movement and not just OACM. Hopefully some of the grant and federal dollars put into OACM will focus on developing more long-term sustainability models and not just short term textbook replacements. This is an area where the college store community could and should contribute and actively participate.

The OACM movement has produced some wins for nearly all parties -- reducing cost of course materials, while producing some quality course materials and revenue opportunities. Do not forget, while companies like FlatWorld are frequently held up as the "poster child" for OACM, they are still a for-profit company and have at least some expectation of building a business model that will be at least self-sustaining if not profitable.

With all of the above in consideration, NACS and the college store community -- particularly but not exclusively in the community college space -- have been serving a positive role in supporting the open access course material movement. Here are a few examples, which is only a small set of our industry’s activity in this area:

• The NACS board formally adopted a policy statement in support of the OACM movement more than two years ago.

• We have initiatives within NACS, and its subsidiary NACS Media Solutions, that have specifically focused on helping the open access movement become more sustainable by making it easier to distribute those materials through the college store channel. As one example, we conducted a pilot with FlatWorld Knowledge last semester, and are expanding our efforts to include other open access course material providers.

• As recently as last week we highlighted one of our community college store directors who has actively encouraged faculty on his campus to consider and adopt open access course materials and other options to reduce textbook prices.

• At CAMEX this year, our annual educational event, we had at least four sessions that directly addressed open access course materials and provided stores with information on how to get involved.

It is the mission of most college stores to provide students with all course materials required to be successful in the classroom, regardless of whether or not those course materials are free. Many college stores work very hard to reduce the cost of textbooks for students. This is information stores MUST get better at communicating to both their internal and external communities.

If you have not seen it, you should take a look at EDUCAUSE's recent "7 things you should know about..." piece on open access course materials. Initially it contained a factual error regarding bookstores, which has subsequently been corrected. I raise this point because college stores collectively have not been good in communicating what they are doing with open access course materials and that can lead to inaccurate understanding of the role we play and the things we do to try to reduce course material costs for students.

The growing OACM movement...

The October 2009 issue of the Hewlett Foundation has an article about the open access course materials (OACM) movement. The piece talks about the growing usage of OACM in the community college space in particular, where textbook affordability can be as much of a challenge as tuition affordability for some students. To date the Hewlett Foundation has contributed over US$50M in grants to the OACM movement.

The piece mentions the growing adoption of an open access textbook for statistics available via Connexions, one of the leaders in OACM from a content-quality perspective. With the adoption of one textbook at one community college alone, the piece estimates that roughly $80,000 was saved for students -- and eight other institutions also adopted the text. For many these numbers are compelling reason to consider OACM.

However, few things are true panaceas, even in the area of textbook affordability. Quality plagues much of the OACM movement currently. As the article notes, of 250 known OA books in the pipeline, only 29 have been peer reviewed for quality, and only 30 for ADA compliance. As more faculty at institutions adopt OACM, it will be interesting to see the impact on overall educational affordability that occurs as a result of lost revenue that normally supports things like financial aid and tuition sustainability, particularly among the community colleges.

One argument in the article that was particularly compelling and that I had heard less of to date was the argument about faculty regaining control of educational content. It would be interesting to see if the feedback they report faculty getting would be sustained once the volume of content available in the open source space increases.

If OACM is here to stay, as it looks like it might be, then it would behoove stores to begin thinking about how to incorporate OACM options among other course material choices for students. Remaining the "one-stop" location with the most accurate information on requirements for all course material needs is an advantage of stores that should not be given up just because some of the materials are available digitally for free. The question I have relates to the financial sustainability of OACM over the long term. Perhaps there is a role for stores to play that could balance the desire for improved affordability with a return to the OACM movement to continue producing lower cost course materials (while maintaining quality).

Is your world flat?

Flat World Knowledge continues to pick up a lot of media attention. More importantly, they are also picking up textbook adoptions – over 250 at over 170 institutions at this point. If you are a college store, you should see if your campus is on the list – we were surprised and impressed by the diversity of institutions on the list.

Like all new technologies and ideas, open access course materials propose a number of opportunities and challenges for college stores and institutions. With the coming HEOA requirements for campuses around course materials, stores will need to know and report what textbooks are being adopted—even those that are free and open source. That creates an opportunity for stores. In June the NACS Board approved a position statement on open educational resources (OER) and open access course materials (OACM). That position statement is largely consistent with those by other higher education groups, such as EDUCAUSE, ACRL, and the student PIRGs.

Stores have the opportunity to provide OER/OACM content in a variety of formats, and should do so as part of fulfilling the academic mission of the students and institutions they support. One way stores could participate in these models is by providing a print-on-demand solution and other options that improve accessibility at the local level. At a minimum, stores should provide access to the digital versions of the content, even if it is free, so that the store remains the primary source where students can be certain they are obtaining the correct content and materials required to be successful in their academic experience. Open access models like Flat World will by necessity change some of the long established practices among college stores – such as the way in which we manage inventory and returns. We must think of this inventory from more of a “just-in-time” perspective, and accept that returns may not be an option. That, in the end, may be a good thing for the industry. Lessons we learn about handling OER/OACM inventory might be applicable to more traditional textbook inventory – allowing us to further reduce costs for stores, for publishers, and most importantly, for students.