The Zero Textbook Cost

There's "free" as in speech, and there's "free" as in beer. Or, according to Wikipedia, gratis versus libre. This post is about free as in beer. (Sorry, no free beer will actually be made available. 🍺)

You might be familiar with the UAlberta SU's Be Book Smart initiative; this grew out of a national campaign years ago, protesting the high prices of textbooks. ("Grew" is probably not the right word, as the current initiative is much smaller in scope than the ambitious national campaign that kind of sputtered out.) Be Book Smart helps students know their options when it comes to textbooks (e.g., sharing books with friends, or looking for textbooks in the library). But it also provides information to instructors to raise awareness about the high costs of learning materials, and suggests lower-cost alternatives (e.g., using coursepacks, putting textbooks on reserve in the library, etc.).

Textbooks, however, are only one cost borne by students. Other learning materials also have a price. For example, some instructors require students to use online homework systems hosted by a commercial publisher. Of course, students have to buy an access code--just to do required homework! This strikes me as a bit of an over-reach.

I am mindful of the high cost of education. For 20 years, I have been using low-cost or no-cost alternatives in many of my courses. For example, instead of for-pay publisher-hosted online experiment websites, I have managed to find free alternatives like the American Psychological Association's Open Psychology Laboratory, which lets students run experiments and gather data--completely free. In some of my other courses, there is no required textbook, just a collection of readings in a coursepack. Even better, due to recent changes in copyright, I can make pdfs of these readings available to students for free.

An idea in academia that's gaining traction is that of Open Education Resources (or OERs). According to Wikipedia, these are "freely accessible, openly licensed text, media, and other digital assets that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes." OERs include things like, well, Wikipedia. Completely free and open, and you can learn things from it.

In educational circles, however, OERs are most frequently brought up in the context of textbooks. Some people, out of the goodness of their hearts, have written textbooks--and have given them away, free. I have used one of these, by OpenStax, in my introductory psychology course (PSYCO 104). Although students were very happy to have a free textbook, I was disappointed in its quality. Sure, under the terms of the Creative Commons licence it was published under, I could have rewritten it--if I had a spare year or three. And although there are OER textbooks for introductory psychology, developmental psychology/lifespan development, abnormal psychology, research methods, cognitive psychology, and social psychology, OER textbooks are not available for all courses and topics. An increasing number of my colleagues are adopting OERs instead of commercial textbooks, and I'm on the lookout for high quality OER alternatives in the courses I teach.

Recently, the Office of the Registrar contacted instructors about a pilot project for the 2021-2022 academic year. They want to indicate to students in Bear Tracks which courses offer Zero Textbook Cost. I went through all six of my upcoming courses, and surprised myself to find that all of them qualify as ZTC. I do not require any paid online homework systems. I have coursepacks instead of textbooks as much as possible. And any required commercial textbooks in my courses have print copies on reserve at the library, or have ebooks available via the library website.

My hope is that by working towards Zero Textbook Cost I can help make education more accessible, and decrease financial strain on students. Do you have any other ideas that I can implement to save students money?

Why aren't you studying?

The Fall and Winter Terms: COVID-21?

Are you going back in person in the fall? This question has been on my mind a lot recently--likely on yours, too. As with everything COVID-related over the past year, I’ve been (hyper-)alert to changing conditions.

The Minister of Advanced Education (Alberta’s Quietest Cabinet Minister™) issued a press release on March 18 to “encourage all post-secondary institutions, students and families to prepare for a full return to on-campus learning this September.” Oh, but there wouldn’t be any extra funding or anything. How encouraging.

In response, the UAlberta President wrote a brief, vaguely worded blog post, emphasizing the importance of safety in the return to campus. Previously, the Provost made a more concrete commitment on February 23, promising that Bear Tracks would reveal which Fall classes would be online and which would be in person on April 26. In other words, not all classes would be in person.

The problem is that there was a bit of a gap: Who would be making the decision to be in person or not? Would individual instructors get to decide? Or would there be some kind of formula, like classes larger than 100 would be online, whereas smaller classes would be in-person in a big room to space people out? No information was provided to front-line instructors at all. No worries, though, I’m sure that would get sorted out in time. Right?

I found that the Office of the Registrar’s website made some promises on behalf of instructors in their 2021-22 Academic Year FAQs for Students (archived; originally posted February 24): “We know that there may be circumstances that prevent you from attending in-person. If this is your situation, please contact your instructor to make alternative arrangements to allow you to complete the course outcomes.”

Er, what? I’m going to digress on this for a bit. If I’ve committed to teaching in-person classes and a student gets sick with, oh I dunno, some kind of nasty virus, I would have to accommodate them. How exactly? One option is that I would then--in addition to teaching the course in person--also record separate lecture videos. That’s a big nope. There’s no way I would have enough time to do that. Then the only other option would require some capacity to record the live in-person lectures and post them online.

I had heard some rumours that classrooms would be outfitted with equipment to do this. It would require a webcam and microphone, as well as some video capture software. Just to be sure, however, I contacted IST about their plans for this. No one at IST knew of any plan, so my inquiry was bumped up until it reached the Associate VP and Chief Information Officer. (For some context, low-level people like me do not routinely have direct contact with people so much higher than my pay grade. So you can imagine my surprise.)

I was glad to hear that there are plans to outfit some classrooms with a camera, mic, and document camera, which would allow Zoom or Stream2 to record and/or stream content. However, “the actual timing is uncertain because the work requires time and effort by tradespeople, and their ranks have been decimated by the cuts. I wouldn't want to have you plan all summer for hybrid delivery, only to have those plans wrecked by labour uncertainties.” So, thanks again, Minister of Advanced Education, and the Government of Alberta. Thanks for nothing.

(I contacted the Registrar about the promises their FAQ made on my behalf, and two weeks later finally got a reply. The FAQs were being re-worded. As of this writing, the promise about “alternative arrangements” has been removed.)

In the meantime, I received an email from the person who coordinates teaching in the Department of Psychology. I had a week to decide (by April 1) which of my Fall and Winter term courses I would like to be in-person, and which would be taught remotely. I reached out to the Associate Chair of the Department, who didn’t have any more information to go on.

But what about students? It’s well-known that many students are struggling through the pandemic. (Hey, I know all about the struggle.) Yet, what if everyone wanted to continue remote learning? Or the opposite? This information would help inform my decision. I set up polls for my classes and asked if students wanted to go back a) in person, b) online, c) it doesn’t matter, or d) don’t know. Here are the results:

Ok, so it looks like a fair number of students would still accept the remote/online option. But an almost equal number would not.

This is like trying to solve one equation with 100 unknowns. For me, one issue is the painstakingly slow vaccine rollout (The Atlantic referred to it as “Canada’s Vaccine Mess”). If everyone could be fully vaccinated by September 1, this would not be such a concern. Another issue is the greater virulence of the COVID-19 variants. How effective are the vaccines against the variants? Another unknown. What about my kids? Will they be vaccinated by the fall, and should they go back in person? Unknown.

For what it’s worth, I made my decision: Remote teaching in the Fall (due to my inherent pessimism); in-person in the Winter (due to my inherent optimism).

Why aren’t you studying?

The COVID-versary

Today is March 12. It’s my COVID-versary. Like an anniversary, but with 'rona. (I’ve been lucky and careful, and have so far avoided actually getting COVID-19.) Thursday, March 12, 2020 was the last time I taught classes in person, on campus, in an actual classroom. Nothing special happened. My advanced perception class did not have a quiz (it was a skip week); I lectured on face perception. In my human factors and ergonomics, I lectured on APA style (boring) and groupthink (much more interesting). I picked up my eldest daughter from school, and asked her if she minded of we went to Best Buy on the way home. I had picked out a nice microphone and was getting worried that I’d need it soon--you know, with the way things were going. In fact, I’d need it the very next day.

On Friday, March 13 (ugh, Friday the 13th) at 12:33am, the University of Alberta sent out an email announcing that classes would be “temporarily suspended” that day. After fiddling with the setup of my mic--it did not like one of my USB ports--I recorded and posted a lecture video to YouTube in time for my regularly scheduled behaviour modification class. I was off and running. And it feels like I’ve been running ever since. On the morning of Saturday, March 14, the inevitable happened and classes were moved to emergency remote delivery. And that’s where we are today, a year later.

Looking back, here are some numbers that summarize my past year:

• lecture videos recorded: over 300
• emails handled/received/sent: ~9,600 (Probably over 10,000 if you include automated notifications about meetings, exams, etc. That's more than two dozen emails a day, on average.)
  
• Zoom meetings, seminars, and webinars attended: ??? (A lot. Really, really, a lot. I don’t even want to know how many. Got pretty familiar with all the video meeting software: Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, Webex, Facetime...)
• major awards won: 1 (William Hardy Alexander Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, 2020)
• awards that I nominated someone else for: 1 (my colleague Dr Jennifer Passey, who won the 2020 Remote Teaching Award)
• professional haircuts: 0
• haircuts by my wife (who is not a trained barber): like, 10? (I am NOT complaining. I think it’s amazing that in addition to being a physician, wife, and mother, she can also cut my hair so I look like a normal person.)
• things ordered online: around 100 (Not all from Amazon. I ordered most things from local businesses online that I picked up in-store or curbside. I try to buy local first if I can to support local businesses.
  
• online orders gone wrong: at least 5 (Just about everything that could go wrong did, with one exception: to my knowledge, no porch pirates stole any of my packages.)

Although I did pop in to my office a couple of times last spring, that was apparently prohibited (oops) so I have not returned in 11 months. There are no plants in my office, and on my last visit, I took home any perishable food. The last thing I want to see when I eventually return to my office is some infestation, like sentient plants, or sentient chocolate bars--or sentient plants that have survived by eating sentient chocolate bars. (Don’t laugh--I once had a mouse in my office.)

In the Before Times, I had a certain routine. I liked my routine; everything was...predictable. When the pandemic hit, that routine went out the window. Although we never had a true “lockdown” (just various restrictions), life was turned upside down. What to do but make a new routine:

• get up and make coffee (priorities, people!)
• get my kids up for online school
• shave, personal hygiene, etc. (It’s important--it makes you feel like an actual person. In the short term it depletes your willpower, but in the long run it builds it up.)
• get dressed: no sweatpants, no pajamas, no underwear-only days--ever! (Again, doing things like getting dressed signal that things are happening; it gives you some purpose.) On the other hand, I don’t wear ties anymore. (Ok, just on special occasions.)
• get to work: check email first for fires that have to be put out, and disasters that have erupted overnight; send messages that I forgot yesterday (oops); check eClass message forums
• then, it’s lunchtime, signaled by one of my daughters arriving at my desk announcing “Lunchtime!” Yes, lunchtime. That’s how long it takes me to deal with email: basically the entire morning.
• Spend lunch with kids. Difficult times can create opportunities. I don’t want this all to go by and all I have to show for it is...work. We eat and talk and joke. Then, back to work!
• record lecture videos: I try to be ahead by a class or two. Some of my colleagues have recorded lecture videos for an entire course over the summer. I thought I would do that, too. Ha! is all I have to say to that.
• Throughout the day, there are problems. There are always problems. (Like the day the power went out. Hey kids, no school! Luckily, I had already uploaded my lecture video for the day and just had to flip the switch to activate it, using my cell phone.) Over the months, the technical issues have decreased, but there are phone calls to make or answer, appointments to take kids to, snow to shovel/grass to mow.
• My wife will come home in the late afternoon, which is my signal to log off for a while. Mostly, it’s a signal to WHERE IS DINNER!? WHAT are we EATING!? Oh, the drudgery of making dinner. I don’t mind cooking, as long as it doesn’t take hours of standing and washing/peeling/chopping. Most days, I’m a put-the-ribs-in-the-oven-for-3-hours or slow-cooker-meat-and-veggies guy. Or, “It’s only -10 C out, that means firing up the grill outside!” When you’re at home all day, your spouse may come to the incorrect conclusion that all you’re doing is cooking dinner all day. You must disabuse your spouse of this notion. I wish she read this blog. Sigh.
• After dinner is another bit of routine. We go for a walk as a family. After sitting on my butt for literally hours, my back is aching and I need to move around. There is a pack of coyotes living in our neighbourhood, so we try to go for our walk as early as possible. Sunny summer days are great. Dark, cold, snowy winter evenings when the windchill is -20 C are not so great. Any colder than -25 and I’m staying inside with my sore back and a mug of hot something with a splash of adult beverage in it.
• Fridays we order takeout and have it delivered, again to help support local businesses. We don’t want our favourite restaurants to disappear! Cố Đô Huế forever!
• Sometime we have family game night. I don’t think that would have happened had there not been a pandemic. (Silver linings?)

My kids have, by objective measures, been doing pretty well with their online school. Some members of my family have concerns about COVID-19 due to certain health conditions, so we all decided together that the kids would not go in person when the schools reopened. Subjectively, though, it’s been hard. Motivation is tough. Not seeing peers is tough (there’s only so much interaction you get playing Among Us for the millionth time). My eldest daughter has now been doing high school at home for longer than she was at her actual high school. Will that be something she will look fondly back on in 10 years? Doubtful. On top of my IT duties and role as cook, I also have to be the family psychologist. Unfortunately, I’m not a “real” psychologist, so this is one of the most difficult aspects of this WFH situation. I do what I can. Sometimes it’s just sitting and talking. I hope it’s enough.

I’m not a teaching robot. (Once I was called a “teaching ninja” by my Department Chair which was pretty cool.) All of this is wearing on me, too. I have to plan, record, and upload videos. I have to answer the never-ending flood of questions. I hear from students who have gone through all kinds of unimaginable difficulties, including death, disease, and abuse. There are days when I can’t even.

And I’m not alone. This recent report done by The Chronicle of Higher Education reveals that most faculty are feeling anxiety, frustration, and stress. More than half are considering changing careers, or even retirement. Me too: one of the seminars I signed up for over the summer was retirement planning. The way the Government of Alberta is funding (or rather, NOT funding) higher education, I may have to retire sooner than I expect.

Now there’s the imminent prospect of vaccination and the hope for a return to normal life. It can’t come soon enough.

Screw you, COVID.

Why aren’t you...oh, nevermind. I’m sure you’re doing your best.