Amid growing concerns about the rising cost of living and student costs, the Alt-Textbook Project has been lowering students’ costs with the goal of improving course curricula for over 10 years.
The project allows faculty to apply for a grant to create their own textbook tailored directly to their curriculum, then make it available freely or at a very low cost to students or anyone else online who wishes to access it.
One of the main advantages of the project is that it gives instructors the ability to take ownership of their coursework while revamping the materials.
David Tully, principal librarian for student affordability, said the project is about helping instructors improve their course materials and simultaneously making the products available to as many people as possible, not just students.
“Really what drives instructors is, they want to take ownership of their materials, but they want to make them better,” Tully said. “They want to make them more engaging for their students, they want to improve their pedagogy, they want their students to get better learning outcomes out of their materials.”
The name Alt-Textbook Project doesn’t convey the full range of course materials that instructors can create. What can be created with the project encompasses much more than just written materials; creators can make interactive experiences, workbooks and much more.
“Sometimes it’s a textbook, sometimes it’s not, it might be a VR experience, it might be videos, podcasts, any type of educational material you could think of really and sometimes it’s lots of things,” Tully said.
The project isn’t just for students who are in a certain course. Tully said one of the best things about the project is that the finished products are free for the public and students to access.
“Unlike the vast majority of books in the library, these are openly licensed which means they’re legally sharable beyond campus. You could publish a textbook or any type of course material, your class[es] are using it, all free, nobody is paying everybody has immediate access to it,” Tully said.
Tully said there have been 125 projects over the last ten years, but the bulk of that has come in the past five to six years. This may be due to the spike in online course materials and learning after COVID-19.
“There’s been this surge of interest and uptake among instructors at NC State in working with that program, to the extent that we now provide grants to about 20 instructors per year. We awarded about $70,000 last year,” Tully said.
Faculty and students from other universities across the world benefit too, with the materials being created at NC State. This can encourage instructors to create more with the project since their work will benefit more learners.
“You’re also putting it in repositories, whereby other educators, not even locally or in-state, but in some cases in different parts of the world, are accessing your work, and then you’re giving them copyright permission to go and use that in their own classrooms so students in different regions, different countries are also using the materials that were homegrown at NC State,” Tully said.
Erin McKenney, an assistant professor and director of undergraduate programs in applied ecology, took the opportunity to create course materials that improved students’ learning but also connected students to the content they were learning.
“I immediately thought this is obviously an opportunity to highlight student voices, student interests and students’ lived experiences, so that becomes a bridge toward belonging and identity in STEM fields,” McKenney said.
McKenney said her project has created a living textbook that students can add to, comment on and converse with each other on a social basis within the course materials, like discussing hypotheses.
“I have found since implementing hypothesis, that not only does hypothesis and social annotation before class give every student a chance to digest and prepare on their own terms so we’re not relying on the extroverts, or the folks who feel comfortable being brave in a space,” McKenney said.
McKenney said the feedback has allowed her to better understand her students and refine the course.
“It’s been an iterative process in refining the prompts as an instructor. I got what I asked for, but not what I wanted, so how do I more clearly articulate what I want?,” McKenney said. “That has led to me providing all around, across contexts, templates with examples, so if I’m going to ask a student to write a blog-style narrative, I better write one so they have an example to go off of.”
Carlos Goller, a teaching professor in the department of biological sciences, said he can use software like WordPress to create interactive websites that students can add to or work on to create their own product.
“I really believe we can all learn and create something in the class, so it’s not just a final paper, it’s something that you created that is knowledge that can be shared,” Goller said.
Goller compared how the website still looks like a book, just in website form. He emphasized how this allows students to contribute and add work they have created, all on an open-access platform.
The program not only encourages students to collaborate but it encourages professors and creators to collaborate too. Along other institutions outside of NC State, research groups from other universities can reach out and use the created projects.
“It’s much more than just text, it’s dynamic,” Goller said. “I can embed videos, just yesterday I was talking with another group outside of NC State, they now are thinking about using a tool that we can embed and link to Pressbooks.”
McKenney said in a survey she administered to students who used her course materials created with the Alt-Textbook Project, there was a resounding opinion when asked about her materials vs. a paid normal-style textbook.
“I think every single respondent to the survey said, yes, this lowered a barrier, by decreasing the financial barrier, it has made their learning significantly more accessible,” McKenney said.
