 Good afternoon. Thanks to all of you for being here for the very first CCC OER webinar of the academic year. I know that this is a time of year when you're all very busy getting started with your students and other things that are going on with your institution. So we very much appreciate that you are taking the time out to be with us for the next hour. So if you would like, please put in chat who you are, what your institution is and where in the country of the world your institution is located so that we can get a chance to quickly get to know who is here today. So my name is Shinta Hernandez and I am the Vice President of Professional Development on the CCC OER Executive Council. I work with a wonderful professional development team who help come up with these webinar topics and other professional development opportunities that come through CCC OER. And then at my institution Montgomery College, which is located in Maryland right outside of Washington DC, I am the founding dean of the virtual campus and I also helped to lead all of our OER efforts at my institution. So this webinar is called Bookstores in the World of Open. Before we get started, let me run the agenda quickly with you. So I will provide an overview of what CCC OER is, what we do, what we stand for. Then we'll jump right into the good stuff, into the panel discussion where you'll get to hear about the Doers 3 survey. Doers, for those of you who may not be familiar, stand for Driving OER Sustainability for Student Success. And then you'll get a chance to hear from two institutions who have engaged with their bookstores. They're going to talk about how they've engaged with their bookstores and these positive exchanges to provide students with what they need to be successful. And then after the panel, we'll share some upcoming events and offer you some ways to get information or to continue getting information from us or about us. So to share with you what CCC OER stands for, who we are, what we do. First and foremost, we are out there to increase awareness of open educational resources that are high quality. We increase access to these high quality OERs for you. We also support faculty choice and faculty development such as these webinars that we have lined up for you. We also foster OER leadership all around, all around the region, all around the country. And so we provide also opportunities for us to grow in that space. And then really ultimately we're here to improve student equity and student success. And in case you're wondering how, where are we, how big are we? So we've grown quite a bit since our last set of webinars back in spring of 2022. So we have 108 members across 36 states and always looking to expand. So this gives you an idea of where we are in the country or where we are in North America. If you're interested, there is the URL link at the very bottom of the screen. If you want to get a chance to know us a little bit more and see what it takes to be a member of CCC OER. So now we get to dive into the panel itself. So let me give you a brief introduction of our wonderful panelists. So first we're going to have, we're going to be able to hear from Kevin Corcoran. He is the Associate Vice President of Digital Learning for the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities System. Kevin is responsible for the development and support of system wide strategies for the effective use of digital learning tools and content that focuses on quality standards and practices, as well as student engagement, accessibility and affordability. Kevin also currently chairs both a CSCU system wide and the Connecticut Statewide Open Educational Resources Council, and has served as the chair of the doers three collaborative. Next we will hear from Colleen Sanders. She's the open educational resources and course materials affordability faculty at Lynn Benton Community College in Albany, Oregon, where she helps faculty adopt OER and innovative pedagogy. In her previous role as faculty librarian at Platinum Community College in Oregon City, Oregon, Colleen spearheaded the library's OER advocacy amidst bookstore outsourcing to Barnes and Noble. Her work has been featured in publications and conferences, informed OER advocacy in multiple states. She was awarded a 2019 Open Oregon Educational Resources OER Champion Award, and will be the subject of a new library juice academy, offered in 2023. And then we will hear from Cindy Damaica, who is currently the manager of open and inclusive academics at Nicollet College in Wisconsin. The OER program at Nicollet College was launched in 2018 while she was the bookstore manager there. Since then, Cindy has grown the program since its inception using knowledge from the bookstore, and is now infusing a DEI lens on the program. She's involved with open education at the state level and beyond as a founding member of the Wisconsin Technical College Systems OER Network, and has served on the CCC OER Executive Council for the last three years. So with that, I welcome all three of our panelists to the stage, and I will stop share and hand it over to Kevin. Fantastic. Thank you, Shanta. I'm very happy to kick this off, but I think everybody will agree to be in agreement that we're really listening here for Colleen and Cindy's stories and I'm just sort of the table setter here. So if you can just verify you can see my slides. All right. So, Shanta, thank you so much for introducing doers and I have been the past chair, but just in case folks are not familiar with the acronym in the organization. It is a collaborative of 30 plus higher ed systems or statewide or province wide organizations that represent about 800 institutions across North America. And really what the focus here is looking at OER sustainability related to student success. So, there's a collaborative effort in the bookstore report is one you may have seen the tenure and promotion matrix float around at one point in time and there's an OER an equity rubric that's also been passing around so those are all efforts that are coming out of the doers three organization. Today, what we're going to do is quickly talk about the 2020 study we did on OER fulfillment and campus stores. I want to first recognize some folks that were part of this study. Michelle Reed who was at University of Texas Arlington at the time who's now I think inside the University Illinois system. And Deep Chenoy who was part of the University of Maryland system and consulting and then on a committee who's also part of that same system where core contributors to this study. And the purpose of this really was that there had been so many anecdotal stories about particular challenges or concerns related to OER fulfillment related to the bookstores. We really wanted to quantify those and contextualize those understanding that the bookstore the campus or plays a critical role for listing and fulfillment of any learning materials. So we really wanted to capture that. So when this survey went out we had about 70 plus respondents that represented about 64 different institutions and systems. So we had a diverse representation representative body that responded to that and I will provide these these slides and there's a link to the full report. I'll also add that link after my sessions done but what our respondents really identified as major issues were really about presenting or displaying OER consistently within the bookstore software. It was that the book didn't necessarily have an ISBN number it was something that didn't have a unique identifier or an alternate ID. And so it wasn't really connected to that system that really looks at an ISBN number. You know there may have been confusion around what was required versus what was recommended there have been some stories where, by default, a print version of an OER was set as required even though there was a digital option. In some cases there was a digital option that had a fulfillment fee associated with that. There's also been some concerns about flexibility around language. In many cases it was that there wasn't a custom text field that would specify there maybe was canned responses. That would be something like no textbooks required which wasn't necessarily true or refer to the syllabus, which really doesn't give the student a real sense of what the required texts are for this. So another area of concern was getting access to the data that's being collected by the campus bookstore and the software and having granular access to how many units were sold in what manner. Whether that was rentals, new print, new digital rental, what have you, and having access to that and a regular consistent basis. So those were the areas that were the major challenges that were reported during the survey. Now we also had some effective practices that were reported here. So we tended to see though these effective practices implemented at smaller bookstores so either campus owned or independent bookstores. But we did see folks reporting back that there was denoted OER within the catalog that there would be markings within the bookstore itself that not only was there a physical print but there also was access to a digital online. There was pricing that was clearly marked, and that there was regular intervals to access that data so there was some best practices that were happening out there, but not to the scale of the challenges that were reported. So again the purpose here really wasn't just to create a report and just air dirty laundry of what grievances were. It was going back to quantifying this and contextualizing this to have a conversation, and we did. So members of doers three reached out and had conversations with Barnes and Nobles with Follett with campus stores Canada and with the National Association of college stores and I saw rich online here, and we had a great dialogue. And so what we realized here was it wasn't a one way street it wasn't always one person's particular fault that there was a responsibility across the board. In the report what we tried to identify is those five areas really where there needed to be some improvement or at least some effort or concentration here. And I'm going to walk through these just a little bit quickly. So from an institutional standpoint, do you have clear policies and protocols about making a we are reported to the bookstore. So our folks were actually reporting open stacks of filaments to the bookstore or are they just using that as a reference within the syllabus. So, do the bookstores know that there is, we are being used. Is there clear dates on when materials have to be reported to the bookstore and is we are part of that communication trip. And so I'm not going to read through all of these but you know, when we came back with some checks practices, there were some things that the institution could at least go back and review and see if they had these checks, you know, marked off. Same thing goes for faculty, you know, is there a timely reporting of these going through is the right information being provided. If there isn't an ISBN. Is there some alternate ID that can be produced, or is the URL directly to wherever that source material is. So if that source material is an OEN, if it's in Libra tax or some other place. And it doesn't have an ISBN can you at least provide the source reference point to that. So I think that the first piece is really telling the bookstore. This is an optional, or I'm requiring the digital version, the print version is an optional piece or vice versa. I really require because this is a workbook that I'm requiring the print version versus the digital one here. So better communication between the bookstore and the faculty and the institution where some of the outcomes here. From the OER coordinator standpoint or the OER advocate is really encouraging, you know, this timely adoption piece of that broad communication, making sure that the institution and the faculty have these deadlines and these protocols, and that they're hearing to those so that the bookstore can provide this information, and then helping identify any errors in the submissions. There may be items that are being reported or under reported or there may be markings or what have you that are an error. So just helping out with that whole process or at least making sure that the department chairs, the course schedule or whoever's responsible for fulfillment is helping out here. So looking at where there's two, two areas of focus here on the bookstore side. So, understanding that there is software that the campus stores are using for fulfillment which isn't necessarily owned by the bookstore so they're using third party software that may or may not have limitations and what it can do. There's a challenge out or request out to those campus store software or to the campuses, the campus stores when they're procuring their software to include better mechanisms to enter OER into the system. Ideally, there would be a great verification process for those license and pricing. So if something's entered an error, that there is some checks and balances here. And again, I'm not going to read through all of these just because I really want to get to Cindy and Colleen here. But actually, it's the focus here is that there are some software enhancements that can happen to ease this whole process, not only from the bookstore management side but also from the faculty and institutional side. But there are also some bookstore policies and protocols that could be improved, you know, better instructions around step by step guides for for adoptions. And how you can do know we are adoptions within the bookstore, even if these functionalities don't exist within the software platform. How can you provide workarounds that better, better educator or better denote to students the options that are available. And then especially in store purchases, better signage, better markings that there are digital options that are free besides that whatever on the shelf. I do want to know one piece. And, you know, this is just not to call out or endorse one particular product or vendor. But just to note that Barnes and Nobles, when we were having this active conversation about how they can improve their OER listing and fulfillment, talked about a new platform and new update that came out this past spring, where they were talking about the new upload materials into the adoption process. So if you have a PDF that you pulled from or law or from OER commons, there's an opportunity to embed that right in the platform. There was also this option to discover affordable solutions. You know, whether or not that function works 100%, but they also do have a new piece where there is some custom messaging that can be done around OER adoptions and a guided walkthrough. So it seems that Barnes and Nobles was working on this and was reaffirming that they had heard similar feedback and in their exchange that they were working towards that. So I, again, not an endorsement, but just a recognition that Barnes and Nobles was working towards this. I'd be remiss if I didn't say that I've seen the OER list serves in some of the Spark conversation that has addressed some concerns with Barnes and Nobles fulfillment. And that while the software enhancements are fantastic, there's still operational challenges that we're facing. And so with that, I'm going to stop my presentation here and hand it over to my colleagues. Thanks for that Kevin. I believe I'm up next. And one thing about that presentation and all that information that you just shared is, I just feel so much appreciation for our bookstore colleagues and how much work they do and how technical and difficult it is so I want that to be really front and center before I get started. My other disclaimer is that the views I'm about to go into don't represent my employers. I'm talking from my experience personally. I'm calling, I'm bringing a faculty and specifically librarian perspective to this conversation. My positionality is that I'm an advocate for students for healthy collaborative relationships with all the stakeholders in the course materials delivery situation to achieve what I consider a fiscally and ethically viable future so sometimes that means pushing back against commercial textbook and sometimes that means embracing it when it's necessary so my presentation will be my experience and my work. I'll do a really high level overview of the issues that are on the table when you start to engage in this work that you'll want to pay attention to and do a deeper dive into. And then I have takeaways and resources and of course we have time for questions so with the lot to cover I'll start with the elephant in the room do we have a problem. I'm probably here because you or people that you work with perceive a conflict perhaps between the bookstore and we are a textbook before ability maybe rooted in the problem of profitability. This is where my experience draws from and it's a valid question. I believe that if we are working in the bookstore as retail paradigm it's very difficult to get away from this but it's my core belief that we are all partners and allies in this work of serving students and putting their success first. I feel like the idea that you know bookstore and library or we are in textbook affordability should be pitted against each other is a logical fallacy especially when your bookstores independent. We're all employed by the college we share mission we're here for our students. So let's get mark here if your bookstore employees have been replaced by a third party vendor in my case I've worked at Barnes and noble, because those people are responsible and accountable to their company, which is profit driven so there's pieces here that make this a more nuanced conversation. My experience is that bookstore managers and employees are hard working, empathetic student centered people and some of my best allies in textbook affordability and we are efforts. Some are already affordability leaders, some want to be but are really really busy with the daily details of everything Kevin just done packed for us right it's a lot. So there's a lot of expectations that expertise is not going away no matter what we do in the future. Their jobs so aren't necessarily always to provide a vision for the future because they are fulfilling orders that come in from faculty. So faculty have a lot of power and deciding what this bookstore future model will be, because what they assign is what bookstores built around so I don't see this as a problem anymore. So there's a large scale cooperation dilemma, which is borrowing language from Carmen Spenula a peak oil. So in a large scale cooperation dilemma, we have a lot of players so on this slide I have the core players in my experience of doing. We have affordability work with our bookstore independent and outsourced everyone from admins faculty librarians student bookstore folks your board, your offices of accessibility and inclusion there's a lot of people who are involved in this right. And we all need to create spaces to have conversations about the poor questions here what is the purpose of a community college bookstore. What are students and faculty needs now. It's going to be in five years right because once you start building in a direction, you're committed to that direction and small decisions small incremental changes you make now are going to put you in a very different place five years 10 years down the road. A big question is, can publisher materials still meet our diversity equity and inclusion based missions are access missions are accessibility needs are flexibility needs for student formats these are things everybody needs to have an opportunity to talk about that metaphor of blind men touching the elephant of everyone sees a slightly different part of it so it looks different for them so people need an opportunity to collaborate and get together to see the complexity of this dilemma. With a large scale cooperation dilemma. The big question as I see it is for those of us who are working in higher ed were entrusted with helping the students now and creating the conditions for students in the future to have systems that work for them for course materials access that are centered on our missions right this is all about mission, while being economically viable, not how do we make a profit as a bookstore how do we break even as a bookstore. How do we work with our bookstore even when we think about the bookstores retail paradigm those are the only questions allowed to us so we need to invite in more nuance and complexity. So I see language new models that's why I say, instead of the bookstore I say course materials access right because of what we're using in our modern classrooms. So I see three key skills or commitments to addressing this. The first is collaboration at best cooperation at minimum. Again we all occupy different parts of the institution. If our core goal is mission is students. We signed up for these positions for these jobs to work together and that's what we need to do. We also need to understand that these issues are nuanced and complex and evolving it's not going to be a single solution answer that's neatly packaged right and everything's finished now it's one agenda on your meeting or one item on your meeting agenda this is a long term commitment to developing nuanced understanding some complex topic. Knowing that we're aiming for a future that looks very different from what we have right now but that the apparatus that we have now right which comes from pre Internet pre open license pre open access publisher govern realities is what we're working with so with an eye towards like these big aspirational futures I'm going to roll it back and talk about where we're working now and what we're working within my experience. So I hope you can extrapolate from my little story what you can for your institution or your organization. So again I am in Oregon State in the United States and the majority of the work that I'm speaking about today it's was a one academic year in the community college, which decided to outsource bookstore operations to Barnes and Noble education. There was one academic year in between that transpired between announcing that we're going to outsource the bookstore and the new bookstore opening one academic year so the stuff moves fast. And if you plan to be involved and to be an advocate to be a supporter for students, get ready, learn these things in advance because it's just going to get quicker over time. So the first Oregon Community College to outsource Oregon has a really strong history of independent bookstores and at our institutions about 70 to 80% of sales are course materials right so t shirts calculators the rest of it. We're really talking about what students need to be successful in courses with these numbers. So the contract was designed to be replicated at other institutions because Barnes and Noble is creating efficiencies in order to spread that is its business model right so the elephant in the room I don't think is conflict it's a conflict of missions and purposes right. So I'm going to cover three main issues and the first is exactly that having different missions from a community college to a for profit bookstore. So you'll notice here I'm not necessarily talking about independent bookstores or there's a lot of overlap in both directions so again, extrapolate what you can from this. So we're talking about Black and Miss Community College versus Barnes and Noble education. Community colleges publicly funded, not there to make profit Barnes and Noble is their publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. At our institution we find success through equity through finding very dated solutions to level the playing field for folks in different positions with different advantages and disadvantages, inclusive and people having multiple ways of doing things. Barnes and Noble's business model find success through exclusivity through single access codes for homework platforms right through killing off the second hand market that is just the facts. There's attention there. At our institution we're accountable to our community and to our board. Period. Barnes and Noble is accountable to shareholders for making money. At our institution we perceive students as whole people learners at Barnes and Noble. They are a market. That's what they are. And if you go to their website they advertise to their partners like Chevrolet and Visa. We get work with us we get you access to 400 million students and all their purchasing power it's a different conception based on their mission right. And they also do collect and use student data so in some senses we're offering our students as a product. And to make this late in with value judgments, I feel like I'm sitting backs, and I'm also going to do in my next slide really high over level overview of when you enter into this work, especially with contract negotiations, you're going to want to read the contracts you're going to find a lot of surprises that aren't just course materials delivery high level view. There are extensivity clauses about using OER couldn't use any OER that wasn't provided by Barnes and Noble until we revert to that negotiations. They prohibited information sharing about textbook affordability options with students. A campus in Florida actually received a takedown notice about a guide about how to find affordable textbooks from Barnes and Noble, and they had to take it down. If you're integrating with college systems how will you preserve student data privacy. They have deals with specific publishers which sure might get you a better price but doesn't expand academic freedom. They advertise credit cards that the cashier tier tells them on the website which if students aren't informed about financial literacy and making smart decisions can lead them into a bad place by not have perpetual access to ebooks. Is there tech support or does that follow the library or your e-learning center? There will be exclusivity for course packs and publisher clearance. They have content specialists that weigh in on course design so that comes as part of your bookstore package as well. You will lose employees to your third party vendor. They have a Bartleby homework help site in the realm of Chegg homework help websites that they will promote or they did promote. I guess I shouldn't be saying well they did promote on the student user interface for textbook ordering. We didn't have a mechanism to enforce all the awesome language that we got into our contract to protect students so on the ground there was some struggle there. And yeah Barnes and Noble uses college branding. They hide their presence as a for-profit corporation so look out for that. Those are all pieces that we worked through and worked with our bookstore administration and Barnes and Noble and one another but it's all happened. Another big piece is you okay so I'm a librarian I'm faculty member I know a lot about textbook affordability both but I consider textbook affordability writ large and also commercial textbook affordability programs which are different entities. So for those of you who are here today who know about inclusive access single access user codes what's happening to the second hand market. Oh we are based products as opposed to oh we are. This is your cue to step up and share that information and advocate for your students and educate on your campuses. And if you're in a leadership position or you don't know what those words we just said mean to be curious and willing to learn about those things. A third party vendor has purchasing power they have publisher partnerships they offer inclusive access programs. Which that's the tip of the iceberg and they sell we are based products so an OER put behind a paywall on a proprietary learning management system on Kevin slide there was that ability to check I'm using OER. When our faculty did that they were put on a marketing list and Barnes and Noble would email them and say oh we see you're using OER do you want to use our OER based LMS. And so what used to be a free course could then be converted to a $39 OER based for so do administrators know that these pieces you invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in your OER initiatives only to have them potentially undone. If you don't know what you're getting into or how to speak this language. The quote of not all we are materials are free was in our contract supplied by Barnes and Noble so we had some advocacy and educating upward to do. A lack of understanding of OER and I'd add to that textbook affordability and inclusive access at your leadership level will leave you vulnerable to vendor promises of convenience and access to OER materials right this is all coming downstream to us from publishers. So, is that an appropriate choice in this day and age for your institution just be ready to think about that and talk about that. And finally I'm wrapping up I know I'm going along on data. This was mentioned also in Kevin's when you outsource, you no longer own your data, you can try to advocate for it in the contract that that data is a major financial asset that that company wants, because they use it to market and they use it for other reasons. So, you need to think about how you'll protect student privacy, how you will retain access to your textbook and OER adoption data in order to use it. Right. And to get it in a way that's not a big 50 page unusable PDF or messy spreadsheet right because that's a lot of labor. In my state in Oregon we have to report there's a house bill we have to report our adoptions to the state and if we can get that information we're out of compliance like OER initiatives aside. And you also need to think about your LMS, which is an online classroom and what surveillance or tracking or marketing might be done there. So if you're doing takeaways bookstore outsourcing is absolutely an equity issue start to finish so make sure to keep those couple that's not just financial. Including students early and often is very important one of my colleagues Maggie Wright at Lane did beautiful work involving students when they were tapped to outsource, and that's documented online you can find it, and follow your values, ask open washing when you see it, if you even know that word you're already 10 steps ahead of the game and find your allies. Other takeaways, look for new models, it's not there yet but we need to baby step our way there using what we have and who we have to get to a place that's sustainable for the future. It's a long haul. You'll be doing a lot of educating but at the core for me it's compassion for my people like this work is accomplished through people by people for people. And all parties might believe that their method is the best. And it's a matter of negotiating that complexity. I am finished. I think I went long I apologize Cindy I cannot wait to hear from you. No, thank you Colleen thank you Kevin for both of your presentations I trust me I appreciate them. And let me bring this up. So, I'm here today to speak to you from my bookstore manager experience. So, these two photos are representative of what I used to see from my students. I come into the bookstore and it didn't matter if they were paying $50 or $600 for their textbooks. These were the expressions that I got, I had students that would leave in tears. I would have students that would be mad. I would have it. It, trust me, they haunt these expressions haunt you forever. And there's not a lot you can do about it. So historical context was several years ago we had a new president start and his words to me and one of the first meetings that I was in with him was to start researching OER. So as a bookstore manager, my first thought was, are you kidding me, we're going to give books away for free. I had never at that time I had never heard of OER. So I started researching it. And I'm like, this is amazing. I can get rid of our our student expressions like this, I can actually have them go away happy. And so, as Shinta mentioned, the bookstore program started with me as a bookstore manager out of the bookstore. So what I want to talk about is that college bookstores are a treasure trove of information. And what can you learn from your college bookstore. So as I researched OER and found out more about it. I found that I could actually influence the OER usage on our campus. So our faculty were used to being pitched books from publisher sales people. I mean that was just common. So I turned into a salesperson. And I started when I started I started with easy books like open stacks and whatnot and I started pitching them to our faculty. And, oh my gosh, they bit. And I found that I knew when new additions were coming out. This is a perfect time to pitch a book to a faculty member, they're going to have to change things anyways why not change to a free book for students. And that started to work. Then publishers started to go to this rental only model. And that's actually a problem for students. I mean some students don't have credit cards some students want to keep their books. This is problematic for our students. This is a perfect time to pitch an OER book if I can find one. And then publishers started go to ebook only and digital access codes only. This is a problem for some of our students. And this is time to pitch OER to our faculty and faculty bit. And then of course there's the high cost books which we all have those. Let's see if I can find an OER to do that. It works. I became sales person on campus. I became the most popular sales person on campus as I started to pitch all these OER books. So your bookstore is going to be the perfect place to find all of these things. What new additions are coming out what books are rental only what books are ebook only I mean in these things the rental books the ebooks that's, that's the biggest thing now with publishers are switching to those. And of course the high cost you can get cost from the bookstore. I'm saying that one of the big things about talking to your bookstore manager bookstore employees are what are students saying about textbook usage. So even if you're just listening to your students as they come in. What are students saying at buyback and I know buyback has been fairly slim over the last couple years because from COVID, but are they bringing back textbooks that are unopened. You may have a few that just never open them, but when you see five or six coming back with the shrink wrap still on them. Okay that's something to investigate are the faculty. So this actually happened. Five or six would come back from the same class. I went to the faculty member and the faculty members that well I thought I had to assign a textbook. They were never using it they just they were under the assumption that they had to assign a textbook. So students are spending $120 on a textbook every term, because they were under the oppression they had to assign a textbook. Well guess what next semester they had no textbook they were using various things from the internet. These are the things that you can learn from your bookstore. What's happening at buyback what's happening our students not coming in till two three weeks into the semester because they've heard that they don't have to buy a textbook. What are what are the students saying I mean bookstore employees or bookstore managers if they're listening to their students are listening to this this gather that comes in. They know these things. One of the things that allows a lot of colleges are moving to our wanting to. And I know Kevin had kind of talked about this a little bit is putting, you know, indicators on course schedules and bookstores. They know all of this they know all of the courses hopefully that have low cost or no cost or you can get listings from the bookstore. To indicate we are a college owned bookstore, I should have started with that. So, unlike the third party, we are more than happy to, to do all of this. We submit our low cost no cost to the course schedule. And so students know upfront what classes they are signing up for, and anecdotal evidence from our advisors students are going to the no cost sections first. And students are actually coming in and asking for those when they're signing up for courses. Bookstores can help you calculate the cost savings. When you're trying to figure out the return on investment for some of these we are programs. One thing we, we live our colleges in a very rural area. Internet can be an issue. And then also some students still prefer print books. The bookstore does do print and request for all of our books. Some, I know some colleges do have print books automatically. We try to do a print on request service because books, our faculty like to adapt books, and they will go through every semester and make changes or updates to those books we don't like to have a lot on hand so we do do a print on request. Exactly the cost of what it costs us to print and bind it for our students. And then also I know this is talked about on Kevin's presentation as well. The bookstore controls how OER is reflected on the bookstore website. We also had partnering with them to talk about verbiage and the required versus optional, and how that is presented is extremely important, so that students are aware upfront, and they're not purchasing unneeded materials. So those are some of the ways that we've, we've partnered with the bookstore to do some of these things. But it doesn't stop there. Anything that you can think of with the bookstore, you should be able to partner with them. Our college doesn't see the loss in sales as a bad thing. Actually, we've kind of framed it as our students are more successful, and they're actually completing courses and when they complete courses they complete programs. And then with enrollment across the country being down this is a good thing to have our students keep coming back. And then also in a totally I don't have numbers to back this up. But when we have students who have mainly OER books, they may they're coming in to buy their one or two low cost books from the bookstore instead of going out and two third parties, like Amazon or someplace like that. So they find it just easier to come in and buy the few books that they need, if any from us. So, that is all I have for mine. I will stop sharing. Well, this is all such wonderful information. Thank you so much, Kevin and Colleen and Cindy for the different things that you, the three of you have provided in this in this context in this space. A quick snapshot of my own takeaways and then I will address some of the questions that are on chat. And if any of you have questions, please feel free to raise your hand you can use the reactions icon at the bottom of your screen, or you can also type the question in chat but a couple of takeaways that I had. Kevin I appreciated that list of and I'm sure others in the audience appreciate the list of recommended practices that you separated by institutions by faculty you also talked about OER coordinators you also talked about software implications policy implications, very useful information. Colleen I like that new terminology that you've shared with us the large scale cooperation dilemma. That's a really a really good spin to it a really neat way to talk about this to categorize this. And then Cindy the strategy that you presented in as you dealt with your bookstore as the bookstore manager and then also the college own bookstore. My emphasis the angle that you talked about that student success college completion angle that I think allows people to recognize that the bookstore model has to evolve in order to meet those, those student success metrics. So I appreciate all three of you. There were a couple of questions in chat. One question has already been addressed and that was to get a link to the doers three report. And so that was from Michelle and Luna had present or put the link into that report so you certainly have it in the chat. And then Rachel asked a question and this really could be for any of the panelists. What methods do you have to educate faculty because so many of them are not necessarily aware of the specific challenges that bookstores face. I can start with with mine. So as methods publisher methods changed over the years from print to rental only to digital. I would meet or talk to the faculty involved and explain the implementations to the students on these changes so that they understood what it meant and what what was going to happen to the students. For example with the rental books, rental only books, I would explain okay it requires a credit card, not all of our students have credit cards, and how, how the effects, we're going to all these things happen in them with the now with the all the ebooks, the ebook only is how not all of our students have internet or reliable internet. And I would explain to them, you know the ramifications to our students, and I'll admit it's not always successful I'm not always successful, but if I can even get some of them to to think, you know, about the students and switch to something else, then I'm happy, maybe happier if all of them did that. But it does take a lot of educating on all of the, and you try to put the student at the center of it, and how it's going to affect the student. Kevin you had unmuted if you wanted to. I'll jump in but if Colleen if you wanted to go. Next. You know, I was going to say it's sort of for, for at least for me it's a sort of a Swiss Army knife approach. It's really dependent, really dependent on who the audience is. And often it's a conversation that starts with what are the barriers you're facing now. Is it that your students aren't reading the material. Okay, is that because the cost barrier is it because they're uninterested in the information. Is it not reflective. So, you know, depending on your institutional goals to if you have, you know, diversity equity inclusion goals. So, you know, if you have a commercial material meeting that, or better, how is an open license going to support those efforts. If there's focus around universal design for learning as an avenue you can talk about how the open license and the open content meet those goals. And then, you know, for the faculty that are price cons just talking about those barriers about the textbook market but I think having different stories in it different anecdotes different approaches depending on the different aspects is probably a good way to go if you can. I appreciate the Swiss Army knife metaphor because that's mine to after you asked I just started down a list of what I've done so like from a high level, I think about faculty lives their work lives and I think of the intersection points where I can catch them times and places that might be congregated or group together so that might be faculty senate association meetings division meetings professional development. And I try to show up with those faces as much as I can, or, you know, being only one person or having a small team. Finding my faculty champions and allies classroom faculty who can raise those issues in those spaces with faculty listen to one another in a way that's different than how they listen to me as a faculty development person or librarian right. At my second institution after I left clackamas it was another community college but up in Washington State. I got involved with the association because there are issues of academic freedom copyright clearance there's there are issues that overlap with collective bargaining within this work. So getting them involved is really powerful. Again going to work education and meetings of Deans all campus emails sure yeah I try to do anything but that but I do those two because you want to make sure you're giving your adjuncts or part time faculty a chance to engage. I always have a static web presence of information for this whether it's a library guide or a website on the Center for teaching and learning page where it's like okay where's that one thing I can look at to learn more when I have time. I get a lot of traction and one on ones like Kevin was saying oh you're experiencing a pain point in your class why is that student, you know what's the complaint oh they don't do the readings, why not oh the homework suffers oh they're not getting it. So much of this is students don't actually have their course material and they and you don't know that that's the cause of these issues. So we worked with our institutional research departments to use student completion data or attrition data to say okay where are we losing folks and then you can maybe map that to your degree program be like oh yeah that's the course that uses $150 textbook. Go to that faculty so we also had we added questions to the course evaluation surveys about textbook materials and whether students actually access them so getting student responses in a way where those students can remain anonymous. So I will mind to work more with student life and leadership to get those perspectives as well because everybody will listen to them, it's just, I don't want to burden them with this work without compensating them so it's like a trade off some get really excited about it like in student government, oh I can advocate for cheaper textbooks, and they make great partners but again being conscientious of our students family. That's great. I appreciate all three of your responses and I wanted to follow up with something that Colleen had said and I'll come back to what's in chat and I'll look for raised hands. Colleen you had mentioned in one of your slides that you get the students engaged and I remember the image that you had put out there. So this is really a question for all three of you who ever wants to answer. And what specific strategies can we employ to get our students engaged that you believe might be successful. I'm happy to go first. I mean I'll recognize the challenge that we have at least within our community college system is that the majority, if not all of our students are commuters. Many of them are working full time at least, at least part time. So it's really difficult to organize and have the students come together, but at the same time, having those student government associations educated and aware of the situation is a great way. So having students sit on your local OER council so they're aware of that of what's happening, inviting students into your regional or your local events so their voice can be heard. Those are just some of the ways we've done it in Connecticut in the Northeast. I appreciate that Kevin thank you and there is a question in the chat that I will just ask aloud in case there are some of you who may not be able to see it as you might be on the phone. So this question. So it's a, so it starts with often these discussions including today is how to use the work resources and knowledge at the bookstore. Obviously this has a cost. Can you address the need for the institution to not only recognize loss of sales but cost sharing to help the bookstore to be able to afford providing all of these services and support. Cindy, can you address having worn both of these hats at the bookstore generally being self up in the library funded by tuition and fees. If you don't mind. Sure. Um, so, I guess I want I was extremely lucky. I am extremely lucky at my institution. But our shared goal at the entire institution is for the student to be successful. And I understand that the previous model of the bookstore was to be self sufficient and self funding. But we were losing sales anyways we were losing sales. We were losing sales to Amazon to wherever. And that doesn't change our goal and making the making sure our students are successful. And so if we need, if we need to change how we are doing that, then we need to change how we are doing that to ensure the students success. And if that is through we are that is through we are, and to try to fight to keep the sales and me and hurting the students, then I think we're failing as an institution. So I am, I'm extremely grateful that our institution has chosen not to to go that route. I think that that's all I'm going to be sending for addressing that question from rich. We do have a hand raised so let me get to this to this question and in the interest of time this will be the last question, but I appreciate the activity that is happening in both the chat, as well as vocally. So, I see Kevin check go ahead and ask a question. So it wasn't a question but is to elaborate what we do in response to riches question. So, Amy Maloney, who is our reference librarian who oversees OER working with our faculty develop OER she and I are literally joint the hip to increase OER and to increase student success. But in this in going back to riches question it forced us as a bookstore and I put in the chat to re examine ourselves. So just like Cindy said, that sales were already going down pre coven. As we were entering this whole increase of OER because of everything from bootleg sharing everything. So but it gave us an opportunity to re examine ourselves of where where are we lacking in the bookstore so we added like I spent the chat we added the coffee shop 10 years ago. The print shop, six years ago. So that allowed us to control the cost of printing doing the print on demand, but it also gave us opportunity to see other things like increased food sales in the bookstore. You know change our merchandise mix what are we doing wrong in non textbooks and certainly all of the other non textbook items carry a larger margin than textbooks. Students are more apt to come in and buy a sweatshirt two or three times a semester or pens or whatever, as opposed to buying that one textbook. And you're going to make more money and bigger better profit and increase sales as opposed to just selling text. And that's how we did it. We're still struggling because of COVID but it's, you know, we're getting on the right track. Thank you Kevin for sharing that. And thanks to all of you who are contributing in the chat as well I apologize that I haven't had a chance to go one by one but it is there for all of you to take a look at and to consider. I want to take the time now to thank Kevin Colleen and Cindy for an amazing panel such scintillating conversations around partnerships and collaborations with the bookstore and your institution. I think I'm hopeful that many of us will walk away with some strategies that we can implement it really right away, especially when engaging with our students, educating our faculty. I see those as opportunities that can that we can get started on right away. So now I'd like to spend the last five minutes wrapping up by sharing with you some additional opportunities that you can be a part of so as I mentioned at the very beginning of the webinar we have more webinars as part of our lineup here for the fall 2022 semester. So here are the dates and the titles, and you can certainly register by going to that URL get more information about it. It is always the second Wednesday of each month, and it is typically 12pm Pacific time 3pm Eastern time. So please share this with your colleagues are in white so that they can also be a part of this conversation and all of these related topics. And then, to allow us all to stay in the loop with one another and to get the latest information. You can go to our website cccoer.org, and where it says get involved you can take a look at some of the upcoming conferences get some more information about that. And you can also join our community email you'll get a plethora of information from us on all the things that are happening. And take a look at our EDI blog posts and our student we are impact stories I can almost guarantee you that you'll walk away from from reading those poster stories with greater enthusiasm to advance this work and sustain this work at your institution. And if you can please take this short survey you want to know how we did how and how was it, and what you thought of today's webinar so we will put this in the chat so that you can access the forum. And if you can take do that before you head out log off. That would be terrific for us. So, let me see if someone could place that link in the lap on the chat for me. I would appreciate it. Either Liz or Una I thank you so much for putting the link in the survey link into the chat. And then, then just so that you have our information as well. If you have any questions if you want a brainstorm you have some ideas for us. Here are three important emails that you should just keep handy. And note that all of these the slides and the recording will be posted on the CCC OER website in about a day or two. So, please stay tuned. So if you can fill out the survey we would appreciate it. Thank you again so much for being here and thank you Kevin Colleen and Cindy for an amazing panel.