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<\/a>\u201cI worked with seven faculty members to develop free and open course materials to support their students,\u201d says Schudel. \u201cSome of them actually designed open textbooks so their students wouldn\u2019t have to pay for textbooks for their courses anymore. So, that\u2019s kind of how I got involved. From there, I discovered that other people were doing this great work, but a lot of people didn\u2019t know about it. So now I\u2019m trying to spread the word as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
To bring awareness to the issue, Schudel had a booth set up at this September\u2019s CamFest asking students for their input (see photo).<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a big kind of bulletin board where people could put sticky notes letting us know what they could do if they didn\u2019t have to buy textbooks,\u201d she says. \u201cStudents were telling me that they\u2019re having a hard time: they are paying a lot of rent, it\u2019s very expensive to live in Victoria, food prices have gone up. And if they didn\u2019t have to buy textbooks as well, they could afford to buy food, to pay rent, to send money home to their families. There were a lot of really heartbreaking stories that I heard from students.\u201d<\/p>\n
Upon reflecting on the sticky notes, Schudel hopes that the financial barriers being placed on students will be taken into consideration for future decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an image that I wish administration would take a closer look at, because there were a lot of notes up there about rent and food,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd taking away a paid textbook seems like a very small step towards supporting people being able to get an education. In my small world, I really believe that education should be free across the board. But if we can\u2019t make it completely free, then I think we should be working harder as an institution to support faculty to create what are called zero-textbook-cost courses for students.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schudel believes that Camosun has done a good job of implementing free course materials for students so far, but acknowledges that there\u2019s more work to be done.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCamosun is already doing a pretty good job,\u201d says Schudel. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of courses that are already using open textbooks and a lot of people who are finding ways of integrating zero-textbook-cost materials into their teaching. So, we\u2019re already doing a lot of good things, but we can do better, and we need to do better.\u201d<\/p>\n Schudel wants to encourage students to advocate for free course materials by talking to teachers, chairs, and program leaders, as well as writing letters to Camosun president Lane Trotter, asking for change. She\u2019s hopeful that expensive textbooks at the college will become a thing of the past.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that there\u2019s no doubt in my mind that this is going to become a priority at the college,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019ll probably see bigger pockets within programs of going to a program level, zero textbook cost. I\u2019ve already talked to a couple of program areas that are looking at eliminating all costly materials, course materials, for their programs, for their students. So, we are going to see growth, and we just need to keep that momentum going.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Seeing students lining up at the bookstore to purchase expensive textbooks for the semester is a familiar scene, but could it become a thing of the past? Emily Schudel, chair and instructional designer at The Dr. Lloyd Morin Centre for Excellence and Learning at Camosun College, is working toward a future consisting of free course […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24353,"comment_status":"closed","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":[15,296],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-october-4-2023"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24352","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=24352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24354,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24352\/revisions\/24354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}