Over the past 5 years open textbooks have emerged as a viable format for Australian Universities to provide a cost-effective, interdisciplinary approach to addressing the need for high-quality, digitally-inclusive higher-education experiences. They are a form of open educational resource (OER) meaning they are free to be accessed, re-used, re-purposed, adapted and redistributed by others (UNESCO, 2024). OER, including open textbooks are typically made available under a form of open content licence. The international Creative Commons licensing system has proven to be the most successful allowing modification for different national and local contexts as well as reproduction and distribution to meet the needs of learners and teachers alike. Therefore, using a combination of OER principles and the Creative Commons licence system we can create textbooks that are free to students – they can be used and shared without paying royalties or licence fees and can be written, adapted and included in an infinite range of learning scenarios regardless of the technical environment.
As with many new and disruptive approaches, open textbooks suffered from early concerns by some academics about quality and a lack of evidence as to their efficacy. Research now exists showing positive student performance with the use of open textbooks. For example, using a variety of student success metrics including exam results and surveys of attitudes to science, numerous studies have found that students perform the same or even better when using an open textbook (Lambert & Fadel, 2022). There are also studies to suggest that student withdrawal rates can drop significantly when using open textbooks while their performance in exams improve (Hilton Iii & Laman, 2012).
The University of Tasmania now finds itself navigating a framework of National and State drivers to deliver high quality accessible higher education for the people of Tasmania, Australia and the World. The principles for this delivery have been captured within strategic themes for the University (Tasmania, 2024) and this has informed the direction taken by the UTAS library to support the development of Open Textbooks authored by our Academics and the Tasmanian community. How the creation and use of open textbooks can support the University’s goal of addressing some of these themes is discussed below.
The University has asked that all academic units incorporate an engagement with First Nations knowledge in their teaching and research programs. A potential option to do this is to include textbooks incorporating indigenous knowledge that are accessible to everyone. Open textbooks can be adapted or developed by our academics and indigenous knowledge holders to Indigenise, localise, diversify and/or remedy the gender balance of what is inside a textbook. This is possible because of the low-cost online editing systems made available by open book platforms such as Pressbooks. These systems allow groups of staff and/or students and community to collaborate on identifying required changes, making those changes, and outputting the new book to a range of friendly unrestricted access formats (Cox et al., 2020).
The University is also looking for a clear alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in its offerings to students and the community. Many commentators have written on how open textbooks can play an important transformative role in supporting inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all as outlined by SDG4 (See for example: Cox et al., 2020; Cox et al., 2022; Lambert & Fadel, 2022; McGreal, 2017; Miao et al., 2019). They can be used to increase access to learning for those living in unfavourable circumstances and can be used to address issues of cost, quality, and equity. They can be effectively free of access restrictions that inhibit quality improvements and because they are openly available, they can facilitate both internal and external collaborations among instructors and institutions, both locally and internationally, while ensuring equitable access to knowledge and learning.
In addition to the quality education goal there are unlimited opportunities for an open textbook to support many of the other SDGs via their subject and approaches to inclusivity. For example, the recent open textbook Leading in Health and Social Care by UTAS author Sheree Lloyd provides contextualised content addressing the “evolving and innovative practices in leadership, ethics, leading people and human resource management, cultural safety for First Nations peoples, innovation, digital health, finance and resource management, systems thinking, change, evaluation and safety and quality.” It is therefore demonstrating support for healthy living and the promotion of well-being for all at all ages (SDG3).
The theme of distinctiveness contains an aim and responsibility to provide courses that build the Tasmanian workforce and include distinctive content that addresses Tasmania’s needs. By developing and adapting open textbooks, the university can meet a challenge to localise content to the unique needs of Tasmanians through course offerings. Because the textbooks are open to the world, they also present an opportunity of access to international students to engage with the distinctive content and consider UTAS as a place to undertake study.
There is little collected evidence on the benefits of localisation and distinctiveness of learning material in an open information environment. However, from a learning perspective studies have highlighted the importance of content rooted in the cultural and geographic contexts in which teachers teach. This can be for example, through authentic scenarios and accessible texts for students and teachers to work with. Moreover, textbooks that are collaboratively written by local field experts and scholars has been viewed by the teachers as higher in quality than proprietary textbooks, which often have few authors and are disseminated by large publishing companies (Jimes et al., 2013; Tindowen et al., 2017; Wolfenden & Adinolfi, 2019).
When considering equity and access to education the UTAS strategic refresh documentation discussed the large number of adults for whom the education system hasn’t prepared for higher education. Preparation and support are needed with substantial pathways programs so learners have the capability needed to enter and succeed at the university level. The objective of our pathways program will be to enable students to reach a level appropriate for their entry into first year university.
Complementing the pathways work, a need to deliver micro-credentials and short courses was discussed to meet the particular skill needs of industry and community. Open textbooks that are purposefully designed to meet short course micro-credential needs, whilst sustaining full unit and curriculum requirements will meet pathway program needs as an equitable no cost (to the student) solution. One of the greatest challenges in developing micro-credentials is ensuring access to licensed learning resources across all enrolled and non-enrolled students and communities. Open textbooks are accessible to all and can be used across the entire learning journey of a student.
Furthermore, the process of writing and modifying open texts provides opportunities for academics to make their curriculum more relevant and inclusive by diversifying the names, images, examples and case studies used. Content diversification allows under-represented students to feel a sense of belonging to the materials, to the course, and to their future profession (Nusbaum, 2020).
An immediate and pressing challenge for universities is the rising cost of necessary resources such as textbooks. Couple this challenge with commercial publishers introducing new, complex and restrictive forms of access to digital materials and you have a real and present barrier to providing students with the resources they need to succeed. For some time now commercial publishing models have receded from licensing individual texts requested by lecturers as essential or required reading. The preference has been to bundle content into high-cost packages. These packages usually contain hundreds of titles which, on the whole, cannot be aligned to the institution’s curriculum needs or course offerings. Furthermore, to maximise the collection of usage data and control access to their content, commercial publishers have begun requiring students to access their content through their own online platforms. The International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) has summarises the access issue with this business approach thus:
“Too often…the market fails to provide access to works in digital form on a consistently fair basis. In too many cases, libraries face the non-existence of digital works, or the refusal of publishers to allow libraries to buy their works [individually]” (IFLA, 2021).
Where libraries are unable to purchase access to individual textbooks, students, Institutions and local communities must decide between purchasing a high-cost package and agreeing to using the publisher’s platform or going without the textbook. Libraries and Library Associations from across the world have responded to this issue by lobbying for regulatory change to provide a minimum level of access within, and external to, publisher licence conditions (See for example Council of University Librarians, 2024). The issues faced with restrictive publishing models over the last few years has forced Institutions to develop alternative ways to access high quality textbooks. One compelling option has been to develop the textbooks at the local level. The Council of University Librarians has now launched a national service to host locally developed open textbooks by Australian Universities (CAUL, 2022). The approach taken at the University of Tasmania to publish open textbooks is supported by the service provided by CAUL.
We will operate as a distributed university to enable us to work with and in the community to deliver access to the teaching and research they need.
The UTAS strategic documentation discusses the high proportion (approximately 80%) of people needing tertiary education and the access necessary to tertiary education throughout their life, not just at the beginning. It is this need that open textbooks have arguably the biggest potential to positively impact the experiences, success and retention of under-represented students. When we layer how open textbooks can meet the other themes discussed above, we see the formation of a framework in which open textbooks can be used to support an individual’s lifelong learning needs.
