Don't Pay For Textbooks is a project created by Dr. Andy Lynch (Associate Professor of Marketing) and Brooke Rato (Information Literacy Librarian) at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU).
This project grew from a successful ongoing experiment that enabled undergraduate students to access required course content via an existing electronic database (Books 24x7 by Skillsoft) license to SNHU's Shapiro Library (at no additional cost to students | SEE Southern New Hampshire University: Forging New Ground by Going Digital (2010).
Learning outcomes of students who participated in the experiment matched or exceeded those who utilized the traditional textbook.
Through student interviews, students indicated that they appreciated the ability to link directly to the relevant course content via embedded hyperlinks vs. being assigned chapters of the traditional course textbook.
Ultimately, students spent more time on learning and applying that knowledge than on reading a traditional book chapter (s).
For example instead of reading Chapter 1 - What is Marketing, students were given to a link to an existing ebook located in the database to the specific section What is Marketing. This gave students the information they needed and enables them to focus on the main ideas and apply those to more relevant assignments vs. memorization for a typical exam.
Bottom Line...
Students asked... "Why isn't this model available in more/all of our courses?"
Mission...
Though we do not propose an answer with our project, we are inspire to collaborate with other faculty around the world to provide us with links to vetted content that can be used to support courses in all disciplines and help both faculty and students throughout the learning process.
