Ohio State Newark Associate Professor Thankful for Textbook Grant
NEWARK, Ohio, November 24, 2015 — Students who struggle to pay for books at The Ohio State University at Newark are giving thanks this week for Associate Professor of English Elizabeth Weiser. Weiser has long been concerned by the high cost of student textbooks, so she applied for a grant to help her students.
“Many of my students struggle mightily to buy texts that, from my perspective, they end up barely opening,” said Weiser. “They might skim the text once but since they can’t afford to keep it, they cannot annotate and they can’t use it to reference later in life. This just seems a waste to me.”
Weiser was one of nine faculty members at The Ohio State University awarded the Textbook Affordability Grant by University Libraries, the Office of Distance Education and E-Learning (ODEE) and Undergraduate Student Government. The grant encourages and supports adoption of low- or no-cost course materials in order to save students money. Faculty receive $1,000 plus support from ODEE and the Libraries to replace traditional high-cost course materials with free, low-cost, or open alternatives.
Weiser is using the grant to replace a textbook for her English 3271 course – Structures of the English Language. She is using online readings and videos from free and Ohio State-licensed databases for the course instead.
“Everyone thinks of the $300 biology or economics book rather than the $50 English text when they think of this issue,” said Weiser. “I believe the problem goes beyond pure dollar amounts. Book sellers have turned to alternatives like selling back a textbook, renting a textbook or using an e-textbook to alleviate the cost. That practice destroys what, for me in English, is the whole point of buying the text in the first place. I think reading a text should not be a passive exercise but one where you read, highlight and annotate to make it useful to you.”
Many students on Ohio State’s regional campuses have family obligations and their finances are strained. Weiser was one of two regional campus faculty members to get the Textbook Affordability Grant. She hopes other faculty members on campus will look at how to implement low-cost text alternatives for students in their classes.
“Maybe in the near future we’ll be encouraging students to come out of college with a kind of digital library, one that allows the average student to not only annotate but hyperlink to passages in other texts in their library. Or else perhaps the globalized book market will allow our students better access to copies they can own,” said Weiser. “We could also move to more primary texts whenever possible, which students can find in our libraries. We’re in a transition time with texts, and all I am sure of is that we’ll be somewhere unforeseen in ten years.”
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