21 Kansas State University
Rebel Cummings-Sauls and Brian Lindshield
Kansas
Type of Institution: Public university
Impetus: Faculty-initiated, student-driven mission to support learning
Student Information System: KSIS (PeopleSoft)
Markings Used: Open/Alt Textbook; O icon
Unique Features: Derives funding from the student government association
Background
In 2019, Kansas State University (K-State) consisted of three campuses, over 20,000 students, and approximately 1,300 faculty/instructors. Deeply rooted in K-State’s mission as the first public land grant university, the Kansas State University Open/Alternative Textbook Initiative was founded in 2013 by three faculty members with a vision of replacing costly commercial textbooks with open or alternative resources to better support student learning (Lashley et al. 2017). To qualify for this initiative, resources must be open (defined by K-State as free, online, immediate, and without permissions restrictions) or alternative. Alternative resources must be free, may or may not be subject to permitted use, and/or be immediately accessible through K-State’s learning management system or other student-only access channel. Through this initiative the development or adoption of open or alternative resources may include any of the following or a combination:
- An existing open-access textbook
- Library resources
- High quality open educational resources (OER)
- Multimedia resources found on the open web (e.g., TedTalks, YouTube videos, Wikimedia Commons)
- Faculty-authored materials
This is the first open and alternative textbook project that the authors are aware of with direct financial support of the students. The majority percentage of funding used to launch and support the initiative for the first two years ($50,000 and $30,000, respectively) was provided by the student government association (SGA). This funding, and all following funding, has been used to provide awards up to $5,000 for faculty to replace their commercial textbooks with open or alternative educational resources. The initiative’s goal is to encourage the adoption and/or development of cost saving texts for students while improving the quality of the learning process. After the initial two years, this initiative gained the attention of faculty senate, central administration, donors, and other universities interested in starting their own programs. The full development of the Kansas State University Open/Alternative Textbook Initiative has been described previously (Lashley et al. 2017), but one aspect that has not been described is the development of the initiative’s icon and implementation of the icon as a course marking. This case study will follow the icon design process, implementation aspects, and consistent support by students.
Introduction
In late summer 2016, SGA leaders approached Open/Alternative Textbook initiative leaders Andrew Bennett (department head of Mathematics), Rebel Cummings-Sauls (director of the Center for the