University of California, Davis
IN-41: Textbook Affordability

UC Davis hosts several textbook projects. The LibreTexts project (formerly known as Chem Wiki) is an open source textbook project developed at UC Davis which provides free, peer-reviewed textbooks and course materials online under an open license. Students can download the texts for free and professors can customize the materials for their courses, such as by rearranging the sequence of information. The project features textbook libraries covering 14 different categories, including chemistry, biology, physics, statistics, mathematics, medicine, social sciences, humanities, business, K12 education, and more. In total, the project makes nearly 400 texts available for free, which are used in over 150 courses offered by dozens of participating institutions in the U.S. and beyond and have saved students over $30 million in textbook expenses.

The Equitable Access program, implemented in Fall 2020, gives all UC Davis undergraduate students access to all course materials for a quarterly flat fee of $169 which can be paid with financial aid. The program expands upon the pre-existing Inclusive Access program, which gave students discounted access to digital course content. Access to digital materials under Equitable Access is provided electronically before the first day of class, while physical materials such as lab manuals and non-digitized textbooks are made available for pickup at the Campus Bookstore. The program’s innovative quarterly fee model promotes equity by charging all students the same predictable fee, regardless of major, and by making all textbooks convenient to access. Students who do not wish to participate can opt out on a quarterly basis. In 2021, the Equitable Access program was awarded Gold in the 2021 IMS Learning Impact Awards, given out by the IMS Global Learning Consortium.

In 2012, the California State Legislature signed legislation directing the public higher education systems in the state to create an online library with open educational resources and textbooks in order to increase faculty adoption of high quality, affordable or free materials to save students money. To this end, the California Open Educational Resources (OER) Council, a collaboration among University of California (UC), California State University (CSU), and California Community Colleges (CCC), facilitates review of textbooks for inclusion in the new California Open Source Digital Library (COOL4Ed). COOL4Ed provides free access to nearly 5,000 eTextbooks, and to 70,000 free educational resources in total.

The Associated Students of UC Davis (ASUCD) DREAM Committee is committed to advocating for Undocumented students on campus. They have overseen a textbook lending program. Books can be checked out for a whole quarter, a day, or a couple of hours.

As of 2022-23, the UC Davis Library program AggieOpen offers the AggieOpen Fellows Initiative, which invites instructors to apply for honoraria to adopt, adapt or create open educational resources (OER) for undergraduate courses. Sponsored by the UC Davis Library and LibreTexts, these awards are intended to recognize the work involved in identifying, revising, creating, using, and/or sharing OER as alternatives for required commercial textbooks.

AggieOpen also provides other services to help instructors access, adapt, and author openly licensed course materials. Such services include assistance from library experts on finding, evaluating, and using open education resources (OER); consultation for instructors developing strategies to identify OER that support their teaching style and course learning outcomes and for navigating copyright and open licensing; and OER Discovery workshops where instructors can learn more about the spectrum of openly licensed learning materials and begin exploring available OER in their field.

LibreTexts page: https://libretexts.org/

Article about LibreTexts: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/10/02/department-education-awards-pilot-oer-grant-uc-davis-open

Equitable Access Program: https://ucdavisstores.com/EquitableAccess

Equitable Access earns Gold in the 2021 IMS Learning Impact Awards: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210616005838/en/VitalSource-and-UC-Davis-Win-2021-IMS-Learning-Impact-Award

Cool4Ed: https://www.cool4ed.org/about

ASUCD Dream Lending Library: https://asucd.ucdavis.edu/government-2/asucd-programmatic-committees/

AggieOpen: https://guides.library.ucdavis.edu/open-educational-resources/aggie-open

AggieOpen Fellows Pilot Program: https://guides.library.ucdavis.edu/open-educational-resources/fellows-program

Cora Ballek, student employee in the Sustainability office, assisted in compiling this credit response.