Pioneering Disruptive Change to Create a Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) Course

A warts-and-all account of what drove Southern Cross University to deliver Australia’s first ZTC psychology course.

Overview

The Bachelor of Psychological Science at Southern Cross University (SCU) is Australia’s first zero textbook cost (ZTC) undergraduate psychology degree. This bold and disruptive initiative is a perfect case study of how an aspirational idea can progress to full adoption.

The ZTC degree was achieved by weaving together the threads of a zeitgeist, harnessing a passion for equity and access, bottom-up and top-down collaboration, and maximising the opportunities of an institution-wide academic model transformation.

The seeds for our initiative were planted in 2020 when a brand-new course coordinator, Dr Desirée Kozlowski, encountered a graduate who admitted they had never been able to afford a single textbook during their course. On the spot, Desirée decided to try to make a difference for all psychology students at Southern Cross University by removing paid textbooks from every undergraduate psychology unit.

Of course, the decision was the easy part; execution took almost three years, lots of persuasion, cajoling, determination, and diplomacy. After presenting the advantages, almost all academic staff supported the initiative, but many felt their unit should be the exception and be allowed to retain a commercial text.

Luckily, the transition aligned with the SCU librarians’ move to promote OERs and the University’s move toward encouraging their use institution-wide. A wonderful librarian champion, Ms Carlie Daley, offered intensive support to academics, unit by unit, until, from 2023, all undergraduate psychology units at SCU became fully ZTC. In this sense, the achievement was one of intense institutional collaboration.

Our social justice initiative will save 2024’s commencing psychology students almost half a million dollars across their degree while also increasing the representation of diverse voices they encounter within the course material.

The innovation will be of particular benefit to SCU’s regional student cohort, as regional students are known to be disproportionately affected by financial pressures. 

Key stakeholders

Desirée’s initial idea came 3-weeks into her new role as course coordinator of the Bachelor of Psychological Science at Southern Cross University. Desirée’s social justice alarm bells went wild, and the idea of an entire ZTC degree was born.

Carlie, an SCU Liaison Librarian, very quickly emerged as an OER advocate to help make the vision a reality.

Carlie said Open Educational Resources (OERs) had been on the Library’s radar for some time as it wrangled financial barriers created by academic publishers and sought to enable student access to free learning resources in a post-COVID world.

Library representatives, including Carlie, attended the QULOC OER Summer Institute event in 2020. This was a deep dive into the global OER advocacy movement with OER guru and US founder of the world’s largest repository of OER texts, the Open Textbook Library, David Ernst.

At this event, Desirée immediately sprung to mind as a potential OER champion and, in a sense, the rest was history in terms of Library involvement. Desirée had already been working to eliminate paid textbooks across the BPS undergraduate program, and the Library helped realise that vision by mapping OER texts to BPS units, using the Library’s special collection of OERs, and chatting with Unit Assessors one-on-one.

A move like this can’t happen from the efforts of two people alone. Each unit must be adjusted, which also involves reviewing or rewriting assessments in many cases. Thus, every unit assessor/convener needs to join the effort.

Luckily, the world was beginning to turn its mind to free, open educational resources at this time. As we worked our way through the project, more and more resources were coming on line.

In our case, the University was also completely transforming its teaching calendar and transitioning to a brand-new delivery model: The Southern Cross Model. Part of that transition was ensuring contemporary curricula and authentic assessment, which included changes to the Assessment, Teaching and Learning Procedures listing OERs as the preferred option in the new academic model.

So, our move from expensive prescribed textbooks to more flexible, accessible options fitted that vision well, and our bold goal of achieving a ZTC course also gained support at the institutional level. We managed to hit upon the “…sweet-spot of bottom-up practice and momentum as well as some high-level policy statements to provide an overriding narrative of what the particular institution wanted to do with OER texts.” (Lambert & Fadel, p. 38, 2022). In this way, we wove together the threads of a zeitgeist.

Background

Australian university students experience severe financial difficulties, and regional students suffer disproportionately. Over 64% of regional students are worried about their finances, and almost 1 in 5 go without food or necessities because they cannot afford them.

For caring educators, challenges like these can feel so enormous as to render us powerless. Desirée had certainly felt that frustration. She realised that the cost of traditional textbooks represented a particular burden on students already struggling and wanted to make a real difference to these students, to make academic success more achievable for those with the fewest advantages. Not by changing a unit or two – but in all the units in the undergraduate psychology degree.

Project description

The ZTC project replaced traditional assigned textbooks in all 16 undergraduate psychology units at Southern Cross University with a range of contemporary resources accessible at no cost to students.

As course coordinator, Desirée first pitched the vision to the psychology academic team in April 2020 to garner support for the idea. The target roll-out date was January 2023. Carlie worked with academic staff to support them in sourcing suitable learning resources.

The goal was to replace every commercially published textbook. Although the aim was universal, each unit involved unique challenges, so committed creativity from the liaison librarian was essential to eventually fill all the gaps.

Key outcomes

From 2023, the Bachelor of Psychological Science (BPS) at SCU has been ZTC to students. All core psychology units and those in the recommended major use a combination of OERs, freely available web resources, bespoke unit content, and online textbooks to which the University library subscribes.

This year’s commencing students will save between $2000 and $4000 across their 3-year degree, representing a combined saving to students of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Along the way, we discovered that this transformation not only addresses equity concerns but brings a range of other social justice benefits – because increasing the diversity of teaching resources can also amplify the representation of minority and traditionally disadvantaged groups.

The ZTC initiative is now enshrined as the default option in Southern Cross University policy and procedures so that even more students are benefitting from a reduced financial burden and more contemporary learning resources. Across the University, the use of prescribed textbooks has dropped by more than 50%, and the trend continues.

Learnings and recommendations

Aiming for a complete ZTC course was an audacious move and may not be achievable in every case. For us, we did it (Yay!!!), but it was neither simple nor quick.

We learned that academic staff can simultaneously support the broad initiative and resist shedding the much-loved textbook for their own unit. We also learned that respectful, collegial leadership can keep an initiative moving forward despite resistance and challenges.

Our recommendations for others wanting to move on a project toward ZTC units and degrees:

• It needs an OER champion – someone who will keep the vision and re-enthuse the team when needed.
• It needs an OER advocate and takes collaboration – Carlie worked individually with each academic staff member to identify suitable resources for their subject and level.
• It is not one-for-one – our solutions often involved curating a collection of resources to replace a monolithic textbook.

Champion statements

References

Lambert, S. R., & Fadel, H. (2022). Open textbooks and social justice: a national scoping study. https://www.acses.edu.au/app/uploads/2022/02/Lambert_OpenTextbooks_FINAL_2022.pdf

Acknowledgement of peer reviewers

The authors gratefully acknowledge the following people who kindly lent their time and expertise to provide peer review of this chapter:

• Claire Ovaska, Open Education Project Specialist, James Cook University

How to cite and attribute this chapter

About the authors

name: Dr Desirée Kozlowski

institution: Southern Cross University

Dr Desirée Kozlowski is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Chair of Southern Cross University’s Academic Board. She delights in seeing students excel – especially those traditionally underrepresented in higher education. Her personal investment in promoting such outcomes imbues her teaching, mentoring, curriculum design at the unit, course, and Faculty level, and policy development. Desirée led the initiative that saw Southern Cross University’s Bachelor of Psychological Science become Australia’s first Zero Textbook Cost psychology course. That project will save each student thousands of dollars. She hopes this is just the start of a wider social justice revolution.

name: Carlie Daley

institution: Southern Cross University

Education & Research Librarian, Southern Cross University