Collaboration
Pioneering Disruptive Change to Create a Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) Course
Southern Cross University
Dr Desirée Kozlowski and Carlie Daley
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.
Using this case study
The ZTC degree initiative at Southern Cross University is attracting attention from other courses and institutions wishing to pursue this very innovative approach to equity and excellence. As such, this case study will be useful for any institution looking for practical tips to implement similar initiatives.
Let the revolution commence!
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
“I want to be open about the challenges of making this kind of bold move, but all those headaches meant nothing once we rolled out a completely ZTC degree to a cohort of regional students who will each save literally thousands of dollars. Perhaps the most exciting thing is that other courses and institutions are noticing. Asking for tips to do the same thing. It feels like starting a tiny social justice rebellion. And I’m all for that.”
— Dr Desirée Kozlowski, Academic champion
“This achievement has been the result of passion for knowledge access, values alignment, and lots of blatant opportunism (at least on my part). If you are a librarian, I recommend that you begin thinking of academic OER champions whose values click with yours, like Desirée, and you seek to exploit moments of change (e.g., COVID and the switch to a new academic model) in the best possible way to enact broader change. Being involved in supporting the BPS program to become ZTC has been one of the most satisfying achievements of my career as an academic librarian. Another key reflection is to understand that it’s a long game, and you need to keep planting seeds and water them over time.”
— Ms Carlie Daley, Library champion
In practice
Key tips for academic staff: Stay strong. Keep the goal in mind. You’re fighting the good fight.
Key tips as a librarian, get very familiar with the OER texts that exist and keep abreast of new OER texts being published. You can do this by signing up for the OEP Digest Monthly to discover new Australian content that is being published each month. This will help you manage expectations when you speak with academic staff about the potential for programs to go ZTC. For instance, there were OER options in psychology, but in some discipline areas, the OER content, particularly Australian content, is still very lean.
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
How to cite this chapter
Kozlowski, D., & Daley, C. (2024). Pioneering Disruptive Change to Create a Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) Course. In Open Education Down UndOER: Australasian Case Studies. Council of Australian University Librarians. https://oercollective.caul.edu.au/openedaustralasia/chapter/pioneering-disruptive-change.
How to attribute this chapter
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Pioneering Disruptive Change to Create a Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) Course by Desirée Kozlowski and Carlie Daley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.
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