In this presentation, we delve into the impactful journey of disrupting the traditional norms of the publishing industry through the implementation of Open Educational Resources (OER). We highlight the success story of the Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) initiative at Hillsborough Community College, emphasizing the significant impact it has had on our students.
Despite the promising advancements with OER, we confront formidable challenges posed by bookstores and the commercial publishing industry. This session will include a heavy focus on aggressive tactics such as mandatory subscription models. We will demonstrate how these tactics create a temporary digital rental market, use restrictive digital rights management, create monopolies through access codes, and drive students outside the Learning Management System. We will focus on how they take advantage of the loopholes in the legal and political environment, engage in OER conceptual borrowing (OER washing), and the inexperience of first-year students.
Panelists will discuss these topics and shed light on the counteractive measures being taken by the Department of Education to address these issues.
