The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) faculty Affordable Resources
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) faculty Affordable Resources for Teaching survey was deployed on February 8, 2021. The survey was open to participants until March 7, 2021. The faculty survey instrument consisted of the following 12 questions:
- What is your department?
- Have students indicated that it is difficult for them to acquire learning materials for your class? If so, can you please share some examples?
- Do you know the cost of the textbooks that you assign for your classes? If so, please share the dollar amount for the highest cost textbook. (For textbook costs, check Amazon or the UCSB Store.)
- Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected students’ access to the required resources for your classes? If so, in what ways?
- Has online teaching changed how you assign materials? If so, in what ways?
- How familiar are you with OERs? OERs are freely and openly available teaching resources. They include textbooks, lecture notes, tests, assignments, and more.
- Are you currently using OER in your course/s?
- If you are currently using OERs, please indicate which ones. (Select all that apply.)
- If you are not currently using OERs, would you consider doing so?
- If not, can you elaborate? (Select all that apply).
- If you would like to consider using OERs for your classes, how might the UCSB Library help you? (Select all that apply.)
- The library is interested in pursuing more OER adoption at UCSB. Please share your thoughts about the library’s role and any other comments you might have.
Survey Results
The survey results are located here.
The survey targeted faculty in 21 departments with 50 high enrollment courses:
The survey was sent out to all the departments at UCSB using the list for faculty communication. The survey call was communicated through the Executive Vice Chancellor’s office.
The first question asked respondents to share information pertaining to their department. The table below shows the results of the number of respondents and the departments they are associated with.
Statistics showing the number of respondents per department
Forty-six faculty from 26 departments responded to the survey. Of the 26 departments, 12 respondents were from the targeted departments of high enrollment classes. Thus, 55% or 12 departments out of the 21 targeted departments with high enrollment courses responded.
The second question was:, “Have students indicated that it is difficult for them to acquire learning materials for your class? If so, can you please share some examples?” While one faculty indicated that students had shared WiFi difficulties, 18 faculty members shared that students had indicated difficulties acquiring some of their learning materials. The COVID pandemic likely exacerbated the textbook acquisition challenges for students. Having some students sharing their textbook acquisition challenges with their faculty points to the need to communicate with faculty about adopting alternative learning resources like OER.
It is fu