UTSA Textbook Transparency: Find Courses with Affordable Textbooks

1. What are open educational resources?

OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or that have been released under an intellectual property license that allows for free use, reuse, modification, and sharing with others, including full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge. (OER as defined by the Texas Education Code)

2. How did UTSA determine the Low Cost Textbook filter would have a cost threshold of $40 or less?  

The Libraries, the Office of the Registrar, the Campus Bookstore, and University Technology Solutions partnered with UTSA Student Government Association to arrive at the $40 or less low cost textbook designation. UTSA students bear the cost of purchasing textbooks, and, as the ultimate end-users of the Free and Low-Cost Textbooks filter, we wanted to ensure that their voice is a driving factor in this reporting framework. We also consulted case studies on course markings at other institutions of higher learning, including Houston Community College, Mount Hood Community College, Maricopa County Community College, and various Texas institutions. 

3. How is UTSA defining “required” educational resources? 

“Required” is defined as a learning resource that students must have access to in order to complete the course or an assignment within the course with a passing grade or better. If instructors list an educational resource as required for a grade for either a single assignment or overall success in the course, a passing grade or better, then it is considered a required educational resource.

4. The legislation's focus is OER. Why is UTSA tracking other affordable textbooks?

Per Texas Education Code, Sec. 51.452.each individual Texas institution must provide a mechanism for instructors to report OER adoption. While OER provide more benefits as compared to other affordable learning materials, the OER landscape is developing: there may not be OER available for a course yet even though the instructor would like to adopt OER. We value all faculty efforts to ease students’ textbook burdens, and we also want to provide transparency for UTSA students looking for courses using both low cost textbooks and OER.

5. Who receives the information when faculty report free and low cost textbook courses?

The UTSA Libraries, Office of the Registrar, the Campus Bookstore, and University Technology Solutions. 

6. What happens if faculty don’t report courses? 

While we highly encourage instructors to report both free and low cost educational resources, there is no penalty for not reporting. However, reporting ensures that UTSA students can see good-faith efforts to help reduce the cost of attending college at UTSA. UTSA Libraries is also working with campus partners to promote the free and low-cost textbook filters to students during registration.  Courses not reported will not show up in the list of courses using free or low cost textbooks. We highly encourage faculty to report courses in order to improve transparency for UTSA students.