Okanagan College students are saving big with an innovative provincial program that gives access to free textbooks.
Ryan McAllister, a second-year environmental studies student at the college, has already felt the positive impacts from using open textbooks in four of his courses.
鈥淭he biggest perk of open textbooks are the cost-savings. Saving money as a student will always come first,鈥� he said.
Okanagan College ranked third in open textbook adoptions out of 31 participating post-secondary institutions in BCcampus鈥檚 2015/16 annual review of its Open Textbook Project.
BCcampus鈥檚 Open Textbook Project, an online repository of open educational resources (OERs), allows students and educators to use textbooks at no cost under a Creative Commons license. It currently has more than 170 books on a wide range of common post-secondary course subjects 颅鈥� everything from social science and business to trades and adult literacy upgrading courses.
鈥淥kanagan College is committed on a number of fronts to minimizing barriers to post-secondary education,鈥� said Jim Hamilton, OC president.
鈥淚t鈥檚 encouraging to see our professors supporting the Open Textbook Project and helping students save on the cost of their education.鈥�
Arthur Gill Green, a geography professor at the college, has been an advocate of OER since 2010 when he discovered three of his students sharing a textbook because they couldn鈥檛 each afford to purchase one.
Green became involved with the Open Textbook project in 2012 and doesn鈥檛 just teach with the materials, he creates them. In 2014, he co-wrote British Columbia in a Global Context, which is published and available in the online repository.
BCcampus reports that since 2012, 1,260 Okanagan College students have saved more than $190,000 across 76 different course sections where faculty and instructors have adopted an open textbook to replace a primary textbook or educational resource that must be purchased.
鈥淪tudents are responding really well to open textbooks on multiple levels,鈥� said Green.
鈥淭hey appreciate the cost savings and the freedom of not having to rely on a heavy book that becomes out of date as soon as they purchase it. The biggest benefit is the ability for students and faculty to work together to actively create materials that further student knowledge linking to educational and occupational outcomes.鈥�
OERs are peer-reviewed to maintain quality standards and offer the added benefit of allowing for collaboration among educators and students. Open Textbook content can be edited and updated instantly and students can view the resources in various online or printable formats.
Because they are openly licensed, OERs can be used and re-purposed by others. This allows for adaptation to a specific course and enables access to students with learning challenges.
For more information on the Open Textbook Project, visit
