Student-Staff Partnership Projects

Overview

This case study describes a Student-Staff Partnership (SSP) project undertaken by the University of Queensland (UQ) and discusses how the project raised the profile of open textbooks at UQ through collaboration between students, Library staff, Learning Designers, and teaching staff. The SSP was a co-designed project that helped build an evidence base about the use and importance of open textbooks at UQ and explored our students’ feelings and experiences with prescribed commercial and open textbooks. The project culminated in a successful presentation delivered to teaching staff around the University about open textbooks and generated several grant applications for open textbook projects.

This case study describes the process, challenges, and benefits of engaging with Students as Partners, for open educational resource advocacy within a university. It discusses the importance of incorporating the students’ voice in service design, communication, engagement and advocacy.

Background

Prior to the project, which ran in Semester 2 of 2022, UQ’s open textbook service (Open Textbooks @ UQ) had produced 10 books across a range of disciplines after operation in 2019. Just over 1,107 students were actively being prescribed open textbooks by Course Coordinators in 2022 as compared to 7,661 students in 2024:

• Social Cost Benefit Analysis & Economic Evaluation (approx. 547 students)
• Public Interest Communication (approx. 114 students)
• JUNTXS Introductory Spanish (approx. 164 students)
• +JUNTXS Intermediate Spanish (approx. 89 students)
• Exercise Delivery  (approx. 119 students)
• Dentistry Environment Essentials (approx. 74) (UQ Library, 2024, August 29)

Even though the service had been running for some time, there was limited insight into UQ students’ perspectives about textbooks. It was difficult to gauge how many students were expected to purchase commercial textbooks, at what cost, and how they felt about this.

The Library communicated a range of benefits to teaching staff about open textbook adoption, including:

• cost savings to students
• improved online experiences (no access or download restrictions)
• increased student engagement via interactivity and rich multimedia
• ability to easily incorporate local and/or diverse perspectives in content.

While some courses prescribed open textbooks, the Library had limited insight into students’ experiences with these open textbooks. The project wanted to use the data and insight gathered from students to address perceived reluctance by academic staff to prescribe (either by adopting or creating) open textbooks.

Student-Staff Partnership projects

Students as Partners

Student partnerships have emerged in higher education as a means of centering the student in specific projects, educational services, and curriculum design. At UQ, the Students as Partners program (SaP) “creates space for students and staff to work together toward shared educational goals” (Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation, n.d.).

These projects are time-limited and characterised by inclusivity, reciprocity, and mutually decided goals. UQ’s Careers and Employability Unit coordinates Student-Staff Partnerships  and offers any enrolled student the opportunity to work with academic or professional staff“ on projects designed to enhance student experience, improve teaching and learning, and transform governance systems” (Careers and Employability, n.d.-a). Before this project, the Library’s Digital Learning team had been involved in several student-staff projects to help create and update our core suite of information and digital literacy modules, Digital Essentials.

Four SSP rounds are offered each year at UQ. For this project, a project application was submitted by the Library to Careers and Employability in May of 2022, Student Partners applied and were selected by late July. The project phase of the project ran for twenty weeks from August to November (Careers and Employability, n.d.-b). Students receive a $1,500 grant, with the expectation that roughly 75 hours are committed to the project (Careers and Employability, n.d.-c).

The open textbook SSP project

Project aims

“Access to required learning resources is fundamental to positive learning experiences and educational success. We believe that a student’s education should not be hindered by financial, geographical, or socio-economic barriers. Promoting open-access textbooks at UQ is a key way to reduce these barriers and to create equal educational opportunities for all students!” (Student Partners, 2022, September 7).

The primary aim of the project was to gather and analyse data in order to improve Library communications about open textbooks, as well as incorporate into advocacy and outreach opportunities.  We wanted to understand:

• our students’ experiences with online textbooks, including any barriers to use
• our students’ experiences in using a prescribed open textbook, and
• if prescribing commercial textbooks disadvantaged our students, and, if so, how.

A secondary aim was for students to contribute to a communications plan to help disseminate the findings of their project and to enhance open textbook advocacy efforts more generally.

The team

The project team included four Library staff members:

• 1 x Manager, Digital Learning
• 2 x Digital Learning Specialists, Digital Learning
• 1 x Learning and Research Services Librarian, Faculty Services Library team.

Three students participated from the following disciplines:

• Criminology & Criminal Justice
• Speech Pathology
• Psychology.

Methodology

The project team used several complementary methods to gather insight into student experiences with commercial and open textbooks.

• Literature review — conducted a survey of literature on open textbook usage in higher education. This work informed survey and interview design.
• Survey — developed and promoted a survey using Qualtrics software aimed at UQ students. The survey was promoted through the Library website and promoted on social media. The Student Partners were also encouraged to share the survey within their courses and through their personal networks. Respondents went into the draw to win one of two $50 vouchers.
• Survey analysis — analysed survey responses to identify common themes and extract useful information/data.
• Interviews — conducted follow-up interviews with a small number of students that had submitted a survey response, and that had consented to being contacted by the project.

A range of project templates (Microsoft Office) were used to plan and track project outcomes. Additionally, a private Microsoft Teams channel was set up for the project and was highly used to communicate and store project files.

Project tasks were decided on by the group and largely completed by Student Partners. Library staff contributed their expertise and knowledge of textbook publishing. They were also available to provide students with training on systems, answer questions, and guide the project where needed.

Project outcomes

The main project outcome related to improving the overall engagement around open textbooks with teaching staff. A major component of this was the design, deployment, promotion and analysis of a survey aimed at UQ students. The survey responses, together with the information gathered from the literature review and interviews, were valuable in helping the Digital Learning team engage with teaching staff and the University and advocate for greater use of open textbooks.

Survey

The survey received 1242 responses, however, the project team identified that a substantial number of these were bot initiated. Bot-initiated responses were identified based on discrepancies between supplied contact details and University records, survey time-stamp irregularities (e.g. many responses were recorded between 12am and 4am, for instance), or free-text field containing answers unrelated to the survey subject matter. A subset of 60 responses were selected for further analysis. Analysis allowed the project team to better understand:

• textbook purchasing behaviour (what proportion of those surveyed purchased a textbook)
• the cost of purchased textbook
• usage of online textbooks
• awareness of open textbooks
• what they felt was most and least important about open textbooks (free, lack of access restrictions, interactivity, ability to include diverse perspectives).

A survey preview on Qualtrics providing details of the survey design and questions is available. The Student Partners also created an infographic to help communicate some of the survey findings.

In Semester 2, a minority of student respondents (36%) were required to purchase a textbook and of those, roughly half indicated that the purchase did not represent good value for money. A surprisingly large number of students (46%) had used open textbooks in their courses. Of these students, 83% reported positive attitude to open textbooks as learning resources. When asked to rank possible factors for why they liked open textbooks, cost savings was most highly valued by students, followed by the ability to easily print and download without restrictions, the absence of access restrictions (e.g. limited number of licenses), followed by accessibility, and ability to read on multiple devices (Student Partners, 2022, November 16). The importance of cost savings for students as emphasised in the survey results is consistent with other international surveys. Ozdemir and Hendricks (2017) when surveying for instructor and student attitudes towards open textbooks found that “students appreciated most the financial aspects of open textbooks”.

Using survey responses

The survey responses helped the Open Textbooks @ UQ service to create impactful messaging about the value of open textbooks to students. Information from the survey was used by the Library and Librarians in presentations, website and social media posts, as testimonials about open textbooks.

Several students noted the importance of having a free learning resource, with Survey Participant 1 writing “because I don’t have to stress about purchasing and it is more accessible and easier to use and learn through multiple devices. It is way more engaging and makes learning easy!”

In addition to cost savings, however, students seemed to appreciate the learning experience offered by open textbooks, including the importance of interactivity. Survey Participant 2 points out the impact of interactivity on engagement, “downloadable exercises as well as interactive MCQ [multiple choice questions] makes learning more intuitive and fun.” This comment was mirrored by Survey Participant 3, “the interactive textbooks are the most helpful to aid learning.”.

Library staff also found it useful to refer to survey findings in conversations with potential authors. These findings could be used to respond to questions from teaching staff or prompt discussions with specific examples of what aspects of open textbooks UQ students valued – whether it is no-cost, interactivity, or accessibility.

Information relating to the cost of purchased textbooks also improved the Library’s ability to communicate about the value of the Open Textbooks @ UQ service. For example, the Library  was able to use the average cost to students of commercial textbooks to help formulate a proxy dollar amount of money saved by open textbooks and frame the Library’s efforts as a direct intervention in addressing student cost-of-living concerns.

Advocacy opportunities

The project team was able to leverage the SSP project and survey findings into presentations at various teaching and learning forums. For instance, project team members coordinated an event for Ready to Teach Week (R2T Week), a program of events coordinated by UQ’s Institute of Teaching and Learning, designed to help teaching staff prepare for Semester.

In the lead-up to Semester 1, 2023, UQ Library coordinated a session called: Open up your textbook! Designing, creating and using open-source textbooks (YouTube, 50m30s) with contributions from the learning design community, open textbooks authors, and student partners.

The student partners also presented to over 50 Learning Designers and eLearning staff about their project findings. Learning Designers are an important stakeholder group in open textbook advocacy, so this represented a valuable opportunity for our project team and the Library.

Reflections

The Student Partners were able to reflect on their project findings via a blog post on the Library website titled Textbooks today: The case for open online textbooks. They were able to report the survey findings to the UQ academic community and “challenge UQ lecturers to consider using open textbooks in their courses and to lead the UQ community into the future of open-access academia.” (Student Partners, 2022, November 16).

Library staff were really gratified to see the student partners advocate so effectively for open textbooks:

“At the outset of the project, it seemed that the students had limited awareness of open textbooks. However, as the project advanced, it was gratifying to observe their growing comprehension of the potential benefits of incorporating open textbooks into courses. By the project’s conclusion, I am confident that all student partners had become strong advocates for the use of open textbooks.” (M. Sato, personal communication, September 19, 2024).

References

Careers and Employability (n.d.-a). Student-Staff partnerships. https://employability.uq.edu.au/ssp

Careers and Employability (n.d.-b). Project timelines. https://employability.uq.edu.au/ssp-projects/timelines

Careers and Employability (n.d.-c). Become a student partner. https://employability.uq.edu.au/ssp-projects/become-a-student-partner

Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation (n.d.). Students as partners. https://itali.uq.edu.au/advancing-teaching/initiatives/students-partners

Ozdemir, O., & Hendricks, C. (2017). Instructor and student experiences with open textbooks, from the California open online library for education (Cool4Ed). Journal of Computing in Higher Education. 29(1), 98–113. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-017-9138-0

Student Partners (2022, November 16). Textbooks today: The case for open online textbooks. https://web.library.uq.edu.au/blog/2022/11/textbooks-today-case-open-online-textbooks

Student Partners (2022, September 7). Introducing our student partners for Semester 2, 2022. https://web.library.uq.edu.au/blog/2022/08/introducing-our-student-partners-semester-2-2022

UQ Library. (2024, August 29). Open Textbooks @ UQ snapshot. https://uq.pressbooks.pub/open-textbooks-uq-snapshot/

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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:

• Dr Julian Pakay, Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University

How to cite and attribute this chapter

About the author

name: Thomas Palmer

institution: University of Queensland

Thomas Palmer manages the University of Queensland Library’s Digital Learning team. In that capacity he is responsible for the Open Textbooks @ UQ grant scheme and service and the University’s learning resources team. He has helped produce many open education resources.