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Tina Ulrich

Dallas district clips textbook costs - 0 views

www.ccdaily.com/...ict-clips-textbooks-costs.aspx

Dallas bookstore commissions

shared by Tina Ulrich on 17 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Tina Ulrich on 17 Jun 15
     
    Dallas CCs eliminate textbook commissions
Tina Ulrich

Should College Bookstores Sell Books? « Akademos - 2 views

www.akademos.com/...-college-bookstores-sell-books

bookstore textbooks jh mh

shared by Tina Ulrich on 26 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Bookstore contracts are too frequently awarded to service providers who promise double-digit commissions to schools, or multi-million dollar capital commitments to rebuild student centers or other campus facilities. Yet aren’t students the ones really paying for these high-cost contract commitments? And what of the corresponding business practices resulting from these agreements that conflict with the mission of higher education?
  • Financial aid dollars are tied to use at the college bookstore, so students face the dilemma of using out-of-pocket funds to purchase low-cost textbooks outside the college bookstore, or running up their already high debt burden by overpaying for their course materials in their college bookstore.
  • Custom textbooks that offer little incremental value beyond the standard editions are developed in a coordinated effort between publishers, faculty, and bookstore operators. These books are often priced extremely high, and their exclusive availability in the college bookstores thwarts students from renting or purchasing used editions of these textbooks elsewhere.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • We think it’s time to focus on how this cycle impacts student outcomes and drives up the cost of education, particularly with regard to attrition.
  • How is this cycle burdening schools with unintended costs from poorly prepared and under-performing students who don’t persist to completion?
  • If it is possible to provide complete availability of course materials, a robust used and rental marketplace, and access to free teaching materials like Open Educational Resources, then why are college administrators not more engaged in exploring alternatives to stocking textbooks in their physical stores?
  • In the end, we see the conversation about textbook costs as moving into a broader circle, involving the college CFO, provost, and president. College presidents have not been fully engaged in considering how schools meet this critical student need more efficiently. But since they are also under enormous pressure to cut costs and improve educational outcomes, the day when college presidents turn their attention to this key piece of student performance is surely close at hand.
Tina Ulrich

Why Students are Leaving the College Bookstore (According to College CFOs) « ... - 4 views

www.akademos.com/...-leaving-the-college-bookstore

bookstore textbooks

shared by Tina Ulrich on 26 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Thus, we commissioned the first comprehensive survey of college CFOs regarding the future of bookstore services, with the results published in March 2013 here in a white paper. Here is a snapshot of some key findings:
  • 88% believe textbook costs impact student retention and persistence.
  • Respondents ranked giving students access to high-quality, low-cost textbooks as the most important service institutions can provide regarding the sale of textbooks.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • textbook delivery and bookstore services are only now becoming a prominent issue for CFOs
  • charging students exorbitant mark-ups on course materials to help fund school initiatives is becoming an increasingly questionable practice in higher education.
  • National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), between 25% and 33% of students reported not even buying required textbooks.
  • Cost is the biggest issue chasing students away
  • Access to high-quality, low-cost textbooks is the most important service schools can provide
  • Used books are the most important resource to the future of schools’ bookstores
  • Financial aid, designed to assist financially-challenged students, is actually leading them to the most expensive options for textbooks
  • In the face of competition, schools still believe they will be in the business of selling textbooks out of a brick-and-mortar in the coming years This might be the most surprising outcome of the survey
  • What Can You Do? Best Practices Bookstore Services Audit If you wish to further examine the issue of textbook affordability at your school, what can you do? We recommend starting with an audit of your bookstore practices, taking into consideration how the economic model is changing as well as how student preparedness affects overall student academic performance. We have put together the Akademos Textbook Affordability Best Practices Audit to assist you with evaluating both the health and the mission of your textbook practices. As always, you can also reach out to us directly to have a conversation about your textbook delivery mission and practices.
  • Tina Ulrich on 26 Mar 14
     
    From the Akademos Blog: Thoughts on Textbooks, eLearning,
Joelle Hannert

Opening up education through innovation | Open Education Europa - 0 views

openeducationeuropa.eu

repository

shared by Joelle Hannert on 21 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Joelle Hannert on 21 Sep 15
     
    Reviewed in Choice, August 2015: Open Education Europa, from the European Commission. http://openeducationeuropa.eu/ [Visited May'15] Open Education Europa offers a single gateway to more than 170 MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) offerings, nearly 800 courses, and a wealth of freely accessible educational resources in the European Union. The project grew out of the EU-supported Opening up Education Initiative calling for more innovative teaching, new technologies, and open-access learning options for EU citizens. Information is delivered in a simple, easy-to-use manner via the content areas displayed across the tops of pages and a giant search bar below the display; advanced searching reveals the website's total number of results under each filter type. Though the main content of the site is in English, the search bar and browsing buttons can be set to the languages of the EU via a drop-down menu. Browsing through content is simple, with filters set to refine by content type (e.g., MOOCs, courses, articles, events) and help differentiate areas of study by subject or level of materials, language, and special features of the materials (e.g., video lectures, forum, assessment tools). There is also an option to filter content that requires prerequisite courses or experience. The search results are set out much like an online-shopping site-sortable by posting date, alphabetically by title, or relevance. Returns can be hit-or-miss, however, with some filters failing to restrict specific content, e.g., retrieving Spanish and German materials even after setting the English-language filter or returning the same results in different languages. Though the browsing and search algorithms might require a bit more fine-tuning, the creators have designed a handy aggregator that should help increase access to new and innovative educational content for all EU citizens. Open Education Europa is also a convenient way for US citizens, students, or faculty to discover
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