Online textbooks informal faculty survey

An online voluntary participation survey of faculty on the use of online textbooks and ebooks was conducted at term end fall 2023. Questions varied according to prior responses, thus not all participants were presented with all questions. 


About half of the responding faculty are using online textbooks. 


Of those using online textbooks about a third are using free textbooks, open educational resources. Another third are using a mix of free and paid online textbooks. A third are only using paid online textbooks.

For those who answered that some or all of their textbooks are not free, a follow-up question was posed.

How do students pay for the non-free textbooks in your courses that have paid online textbooks or ebooks?

There were seven responses.

  1. Books money
  2. Financial Aid
  3. thru Bookstore
  4. Three are free, one is not free. The one textbook that has to be purchased online is for a course spring 2024. The online textbook is available for Amazon Kindle, I do not know how the students will pay for the textbook. They would need a credit/debit card and sufficient funds at the start of the term to purchase the textbook. The other online textbooks are open access and are integrated into the Canvas courses as Pages in the courses that use them.
  5. N/A
  6. not sure...FAFSA
  7. It's charged to the students account. 

For instructors not using online textbooks, almost half do not know whether an online text is available. A third indicated that an online version is available. Nearly a quarter noted that some or all of their textbooks do not have an online version. 


Perhaps somewhat surprising, of those not using online textbooks, all are considering a move to using online textbooks. 

The final question was an open answer request for comments, concerns, and suggestions.

  • As a college we should be pushing instructors to use OERs.
  • None so far...
  • the college should find an online course whose ebooks can be downloaded by our students.
  • If students were to use online textbook, my concern is our Wifi here at Chuuk campus is not stable…often times we cannot connect. Some areas especially classrooms do not have access to wifi or internet so this would be a challenge for both teachers and students not being able to connect when trying to use the online textbook in class. I hope it could be downloadable in case no internet connection. 
  • I am trying to contact the Cengage rep on how to avail the online textbook for Agriculture textbook.
  • I am still unclear as to the purpose of this survey. 
  • The online textbooks being used are from Cengage for faculty.
  • none
  • Need recent online e-book from Pearson Company.
Post-script


The next generation of students are digitally oriented students. In the above image a future student is intentionally holding her right thumb up off the screen. She is watching a YouTube video at the top of the screen while using her right thumb to scroll through the list of videos below the one that is playing. She is paying attention to both the video that is playing while looking for the next video to watch. Neuroplasticity would support a theory that her developing mind is setting itself up to handle two digital screen inputs at one time. The structure and capacities of her mind will be different from that of previous generations of Homo sapiens. She is Homo technologicus. Her educational environment will be deeply digital, undoubtedly eventually augment by the use of one form or another of artificial intelligence. 

Digital textbooks seem likely to give way to video and immersive virtual reality formats. Meanwhile colleges are still working on moving off of printed textbooks. Education will have to adapt and evolve in order to survive and potentially thrive with students such as her. To alter a quote from Shakespeare, "How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people as her in't."

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