In the July edition of Edubytes, our guest editors are Heather Berringer, Associate Provost, Academic Operations and Services, UBC Okanagan and Christina Hendricks, Professor of Teaching in UBC’s Department of Philosophy, UBC Vancouver.
UBC’s commitment to addressing the challenge of affordability for its students
The UBC Student Affordability Taskforce (SATF) was established in 2021 in response to growing concerns about the challenges students face when trying to manage the total cost of attending UBC. The SATF involved a system-wide consultations across UBC campuses, with leadership from the Provosts at UBC Okanagan and UBC Vancouver, the Vice President Students, and faculty, students, and staff from across UBC. In the spring of 2022, the SATF published a report (PDF) that included a definition of what UBC means by an affordability problem: “when a student cannot meet necessary expenses (including a moderate standard of living) without taking on excessive debt after taking into account federal grants and loans.” The SATF report identified recommendations to help achieve 5 key objectives: enhance student financial decision making, engage students in decisions regarding tuition, support financial wellness, advocate for student affordability, and focus efforts through incisive metrics. In this edition of Edubytes, we explore work that is taking place in alignment with the SATF’s objective to support the financial wellbeing of students through efforts that minimize the cost of educational materials.
Activities to reduce the cost of educational materials
An important aspect of student affordability is the cost of course materials, including textbooks, homework or quiz platforms, and other learning resources that instructors ask students to use in courses. Affordability of course materials is crucial to learning: students can’t learn from resources they can’t access due to cost or publisher restrictions that prevent the Library from making them available. If a course requires students to purchase access to an online system used for assessment, and they cannot afford to do so, both learning and grades could be significantly impacted.
The SATF made a series of recommendations to help address affordability of course materials, several of which have been completed. One was to renew UBC funding to support creation, revision, and use of open educational resources (OER), teaching and learning materials that are usually free of charge to access and carry an open copyright license that allows for revision, reuse, and redistribution. At UBCO the Aspire-2040 Learning Transformations Fund has an OER Focus stream, and at UBCV, the OER Fund provides both small Rapid Innovation Grants and larger Affordability Grants to support OER projects.
A second SATF recommendation proposed a new OER Excellence & Impact Award, which has now been established. This award recognizes faculty, staff, and students at both campuses who have furthered the use and impact of open educational resources in credit courses at UBC. The award recognizes both excellence in OER work as well as evidence of the impact of that work, such as student cost savings and adoption of OER by colleagues both within and beyond UBC. One individual and one group award per campus were awarded in 2024, the program’s inaugural year.
Finally, both UBCV and UBCO now have Senate policies governing the use of fee-based digital learning tools used for assessment (such as homework and quiz platforms), O-131.2 (PDF) and V-131 (PDF). These policies limit the cost to students of such tools, and the percentage they contribute to a students’ final grade by encouraging faculty to continue to develop and adopt OERs, as well as other strategies to move towards lifting the burden of these costs on students entirely.
You can find out more information and details about additional recommendations from the SATF in the links below, as well as some examples of funding initiatives at UBCV and UBCO to lower costs for students which, we hope, will help students manage the increasing costs they face in their pursuit of their education.
Links
Student Affordability Task Force Report (2022) [PDF]; Annual Updates: 2023 (PDF) and 2024 (PDF)
The Student Affordability Task Force began its work in 2021 to “clearly define what UBC means by ‘affordability’ and the scope of the university’s commitments in addressing student affordability; and to develop recommendations to address the challenges that UBC students face in terms of affordability”. The report, with recommendations, was presented to the Board of Governors in 2022, and annual updates on the recommendations have happened each year since then.
OER Fund at UBCV; ALT-2040 Fund at UBCO
Key funding opportunities to support affordable and inclusive access to learning materials through the adoption, adaptation, development, and integration of open educational resources in courses.
OER Excellence & Impact Awards
Teaching and learning awards that recognize outstanding work done by faculty at both UBC campuses who materially advance the use and impact of open educational resources in credit courses at UBC. Learn about the 2024 awardees.
Campus Senate policies on Digital Assessment Tools: O-131.2 [PDF] (UBC Okanagan) and V-131 [PDF] (UBC Vancouver)
While there are differences in approach, on both campuses these policies establish clearly the maximum cost to students for digital assessment tools within course contexts, as well as limit how much such digital assessments are permitted to weigh in a student’s academic standing.
Enjoyed reading about the Student Affordability Taskforce? Learn about other topics we covered in the June 2024 edition by reading the complete Edubytes newsletter. To view past issues, visit the Edubytes archive.
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