September 19, 2022
St. Francis Xavier University and The U, Antigonish, NS
We proudly announce that the StFX Students' Union and the University have partnered to launch the first Open Educational Resources (OER) grant program! This grant program offers StFX professors funding for the resources that will allow them to switch from using traditionally published textbooks to Open Educational Resources. Open Educational Resources are an openly licensed free alternative to regular textbooks, making for more affordable and inclusive student learning opportunities.
This is a huge help to the affordability of textbooks for StFX students, and we are thrilled that the first year of the program, which provided $39 488 of funding to StFX faculty, will save students approximately $88 000 in textbook costs per year. In addition, a significant portion of the funding was used to pay for summer students hired by StFX faculty to help them with their Open Educational Resource projects. We would like to thank all the faculty who applied to the OER pilot program and are currently working on their projects, and all those who have contributed to this initiative. Some projects that are presently being funded include Dr. Janitina Toxopeus’s Biology 111/112 which alone will save students up to 56,700$ a year by providing an OER. Successful grant recipients are Dr. Mark Baker’s Physics 121/122, Dr. David Young’s Education 434, Dr. Erin Mazerolle’s new Selected Topics in Cognitive Neuroscience, Dr. Tracy Everitt’s Human Nutrition 425, and Dr. Keith De’Bells’s Math 236. We thank these award winners for their participation and patience as we created and implemented this program.
Currently, the Students’ Union is working on other initiatives to further the accessibility of universities by lowering the cost of textbooks. Our Zero Textbook Cost course database is available on our website to feature the amazing work professors here on our campus have done to make their classes more accessible. This course database showcases classes that do not have an assigned textbook or that use OER within their classes. The Union and University have also collaborated on the textbook loaner program, where students can donate their used textbooks for free in-library use for other students. Our on-campus partnerships with the university have helped us provide more services to more students to make post-secondary education more accessible.
For more information, contact:
Naomi Stobart
Vice President Academic, StFX Students’ Union
The U- For Students by Student | @theuoffical | su_academic@stfx.ca