1 Megan Ashcraft – Student Outreach Through Talkback Boards
1 Megan Ashcraft – Student Outreach Through Talkback Boards
Goal:
The goal of this project is to determine student’s perceptions on the cost of class materials like textbooks when contrasted against personal needs like rent, groceries, and other bills
Smart Goals Outline:
Smart Goal: To introduce the idea of OER to students at Pima Downtown and Pima West via talk back board
Specific Steps I Can Take:
- Getting in touch with both campuses
- Gathering prompt Ideas
- Attending to the boards semi-regularly
Potential Collaborators & Resources:
- Campus Librarians
- UAL UX designers (to ask how they find success with their boards)
- Other interns
Potential Barriers:
- Area Permissions
- Campus availability
Questions/Issues I Need to Resolve:
- Possible Vandalism
- Joke responses
Desired Outcome(s):
- To have students thinking about how OER can positively affect their education
Implementation:
Set Up:
To begin, I created Zero Cost Flyer. This flyer shows students how to find Pima Community College classes with zero textbook costs using the course catalog. I also created two TalkBack Prompts to be interchangeable on the boards that require the student to self-reflect about their college expenses. By combining to the Zero Cost flyer and self-reflection prompts, I hope for students to become aware of their current college expenses and how picking classes that use zero-cost materials like Open Education Resources can create room within their budgets.
I contacted both Emily Besich and Christopher Schipper, the Heads of the Downtown and West Campus Libraries respectively, about the possibility of posting the flyer and prompts at each location. Once they agreed, I was able to visit each library to put up the prompts.
Downtown Campus Before: “What would you have bought instead of textbooks?”
Downtown Campus after: 55 total responses
Downtown Campus pt. 2: “How much did you spend on textbooks this semester”
Before: (image not available)
After: 2 total responses
West Campus Before: “How much did you spend on textbooks this semester?”*
*The one response on the board for $185 was written by me as an example and will be deleted from the data
West Campus After: 2 total responses
Data:
Prompt 1:
The prompt I presented to the Downtown Campus library patrons was “What would you have bought instead of textbooks?”. I presented this prompt to get an idea of where students personal priorities lie when compared to having to buy materials for class. I received 55 responses varying in seriousness. As expected, there were six answers that were off topic in nature so I have excluded them from the main comparison of data for the purposes of the assignment.
The data showed a great variance in the needs of students, yet each response is valid in its own right. For every “candy & chips” post-it there was a “food and gas” response. A few that stood out are:
“gas & new clothes for my daughter”
“I would have paid off some of my existing debt.”
“I would buy my younger siblings all the t