{"id":12611,"date":"2016-10-19T09:00:40","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=12611"},"modified":"2016-10-31T13:08:34","modified_gmt":"2016-10-31T20:08:34","slug":"camosun-students-save-thousands-with-free-textbooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/10\/19\/camosun-students-save-thousands-with-free-textbooks\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun students save thousands with free textbooks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camosun students have saved over $115,000 since 2012 through the Open Textbook Project, according to the provincial government. The project offers free online textbooks so students don\u2019t have to pay for physical books.<\/p>\n

The project is spearheaded at Camosun by Plumbing and Pipe Trades instructor Rod Lidstone, who says that Camosun was given \u201ccopyright freedom to modify\u201d Trades Access Common Core textbooks by the Industry Training Authority.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the entry-level section, the previous textbooks that they replaced probably cost about $250, so that\u2019s the savings per student,\u201d says Lidstone, speaking on the savings for Plumbing and Pipe Trades students specifically. \u201cWe\u2019re doing a lot of partnerships with high-school programs: dual-credit programs, where they\u2019re registered in the college and they\u2019re taking their high-school shop programs. If they were to continue on, they could get recognition for the work that they\u2019ve done in high school. High-school students\u2019 budgets are always very tight; these are perfect for the high-school programs as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

As to the publishers who are no longer receiving thousands of dollars a year from Camosun students, Lidstone says they are not his first priority.<\/p>\n

\"Camosun\u2019s<\/a>
Camosun\u2019s Rod Lidstone wants to see students save money on textbooks (photo by Jill Westby\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not necessarily my biggest concern,\u201d says Lidstone. \u201cI have a bigger concern for the students. That\u2019s number one. Whatever shakes down after that is not really in my focus.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Representatives from two textbook-publishing companies did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this story by deadline.)<\/p>\n

Minister of advanced education Andrew Wilkinson says that the Open Textbook Project has \u201cno downside\u201d for students.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe academic publishers were basically playing games with students by rearranging chapters in books that had been around for decades,\u201d says Wilkinson.<\/p>\n

Wilkinson says that the project has started to lift off in recent months, with more and more students opting for free, paperless textbooks. He says that the government made a specific effort to focus on trades programs because of the \u201cridiculous\u201d high cost of textbooks despite the fact that they are often \u201cvery small.\u201d Wilkinson says that the government is currently \u201cpushing 170 textbooks\u201d in the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far we\u2019ve saved students [across the province] about $2 million,\u201d says Wilkinson.<\/p>\n

Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) external executive Rachael Grant says that the Open Textbook Project will help students with learning disabilities and make education more accessible; she says she would like it to grow in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cTextbooks are a huge barrier for students to be able to properly access post-secondary, especially with the rise in the cost of textbooks,\u201d says Grant. \u201cIt\u2019s something that students definitely struggle with. It\u2019s really great to see the BC government supporting this particular initiative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilkinson draws attention to one example at the University of British Columbia. He says that instead of making students buy a textbook for a Physics 100 class, a free alternative was offered. Students saved \u201csomething like $150,000 with that one textbook,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is continuing to grow and expand,\u201d says Wilkinson. \u201cWe want students to raise this with faculty because the instructors and professors are the ones who decide on the textbook. The more the students raise it, and find out that they\u2019re actually working well, the more it will be accepted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilkinson says that the publishers of traditional textbooks are \u201cpretty low-profile about\u201d the Open Textbook Project and \u201cdon\u2019t view us as much of a threat yet.\u201d Wilkinson says that Alberta and Saskatchewan were hesitant to take the project on; here in BC, Kamloops\u2019 Thompson Rivers University adopted it after listening to a \u201cpush\u201d from the student body.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe expect this to get bigger and bigger. So far, I think we have 17,000 students using them, and that\u2019s out of a total student population of about 425,000, so we\u2019ve got lots of room to grow,\u201d says Wilkinson.<\/p>\n

Funding for the project, says Wilkinson, has been $2 million so far; he points out that it comes out of the Ministry of Advanced Education\u2019s budget, which students don\u2019t pay for.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich is the way we think it should be,\u201d he says, \u201cto make services available to students to get them maximally involved in education.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun students have saved over $115,000 since 2012 through the Open Textbook Project, according to the provincial government. The project offers free online textbooks so students don\u2019t have to pay for physical books. The project is spearheaded at Camosun by Plumbing and Pipe Trades instructor Rod Lidstone, who says that Camosun was given \u201ccopyright freedom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-october-19-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12611"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12614,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12611\/revisions\/12614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}