Are you #TextbookBroke at JCU?

How much did you spend on textbooks this study period? What would you spend that money on if you didn’t have to pay for books? What would adequate free access to resources mean for your study success? The Library’s Textbook Affordability Project (TAP) team wants to know about student textbook experiences at JCU. As part of Open Education (OE) week (March 3 - March 7), we are launching a student feedback campaign at the Eddie Koiki Mabo and Cairns Campus Libraries. You’ll find our #TextbookBroke whiteboards set up in the foyer, with some OE merch and lollies to sweeten the deal. Drop by, say hi, and tell us what you think! Alternatively, you can give feedback via our online form.

What is Open Education Week? 

OE Week is an annual global celebration of the creation, adaptation and distribution of freely available and accessible educational materials and pedagogies. The Open Education movement seeks to remove barriers to learning and increase access to education globally. Participation in OE Week has been growing since its inception over a decade ago, and Open Education Global provides a fantastic array of activities and resources if you want to get involved. 

What are we doing about Open Education at JCU? 

The JCU Library has been working with academics to provide free ebooks on the JCU Open eBooks platform since 2021. With a small team and limited resources, an astonishing 26 books have been published on this platform and that of the CAUL Open Educational Resources Collective. A further six ebooks are available at no cost to JCU students in their LearnJCU subject sites. This is a potential collective saving to students of at least $529,100. 

In 2024, with the intention of helping academics move towards zero cost to student course materials, the JCU Library launched the Textbook Affordability Project (TAP). This project currently focuses on first year courses and advocates for several different approaches to relieving the financial burden placed on students, including Open Textbooks as well as curated reading lists or more flexible/cheaper commercial texts through library licenses. You can connect with our TAP team through our JCU Library Open Education Contact Form.   

Where can I find Open Education Resources?

Try starting with our JCU Discovery Collection. This is a top notch curation of Open Textbooks from JCU and other universities within Australia, and abroad. It's arranged into subject area and easy to navigate, as well as regularly updated by our library specialists to ensure it contains all the best and most relevant resources in those areas.

You can also take a look on the CAUL Open Educational Resources Collective's catalogue of Open ebooks, which are usually of high quality and provide Australian context. The pressbooks directory and OER Commons are two platforms to use that provide larger, global pool of resources in which to search. Don't forget that you can always reach out to the Open Education Team at JCU with help in finding, using and creating Open Educational Resources.