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Matt Magalhaes, affordable textbook campaign coordinator for MassPirg at UMass, holds props at a press conference urging more faculty to use open source texts.
(Diane Lederman/The Republican)
AMHERST - About 65 percent of college students don't buy textbooks because of cost, said Matt Magalhaes, the affordable textbook campaign coordinator for MassPirg at the University of Massachusetts.
Textbooks can cost students $1,200 a year.
He and other students and librarians at the university are hoping that students will pressure their professors to adopt open source textbooks.
MassPirg organized a press conference Wednesday to highlight a new report issued Tuesday by student public interest groups urging institutions to use open source textbooks in their classrooms and report that students would save more than $1 billion nationally a year.
Marilyn Billings, scholarly communication and special initiatives librarian at UMass, and Jay Schafer, director of libraries, both spoke at the press conference also urging more faculty to adopt the open source texts.
In 2011, UMass launched the Open Education Initiative to encourage and help faculty find ways to bring course material to class using proprietary library resources and open educational resources, which are digital materials available at no cost through so-called open licenses. The initiative provides between $1,000 to $2,500 in funding to help professors make the transition.
Since then about 50 faculty have created open source material. That $60,000 investment has saved students more than $1 million, Schafer said.
Jennifer Raichel a member of the Student Government Association said the SGA has passed legislation to support more open source textbooks and supports "pushing faculty to make the switch.'
She also said "not a lot of students know about it." They are hoping to make more students aware so they can talk to faculty.
Billings said they want faculty to spread the word as well.
Shaffer is hoping there will be more support for the open initiative program to allow the library to hire someone specifically to help faculty create and adopt open source textbooks in more classes so that open source use "becomes the normal course of action."
Billings right now is taking this on as part of her other libraries responsibilities.