Jade Strauss, Britney Cordice-Little

The average cost of college textbooks has risen dramatically over the last decade, contributing to textbook price inflation and students’ inability to access educational resources equally (Nagle & Vitez, 2021). Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are available to the public in any medium under a family of open licensing policies. Openly licensed course materials can be equally accessed by all students on the first day of classes and are often low or no cost. As student workers with the on-campus OER team, we constructed a student textbook survey to better understand textbook cost effects on students at SUNY Oneonta. The survey contained 21 questions about textbook accessibility, cost, and purchasing choices. Our findings indicate that students are sometimes avoiding purchasing textbooks based on cost and usage in class. Students are finding alternative ways to get information about their course content. The results of this survey inform us about the student textbook climate as well as how to improve OER outreach in the future.