Burden-Free Instructional Materials (BFIM) Taskforce

To make burden-free instructional materials more available to students in the California Community College system, the Chancellor's Office launched the Burden Free Instructional Materials Taskforce to address the structural changes and system supports needed to facilitate the creation of sustainable solutions that reduce costs of instructional materials and alleviate financial, administrative, and psychological burdens for all students. The taskforce, comprised of systemwide representatives, open educational resources partners, and students, engaged in productive conversations on topics such as: student friction points accessing instructional materials, efforts and opportunities to further scale Open Educational Resources, and review existing system resources and gaps to support the local prioritization of burden free efforts.

The taskforce engaged a system-wide objective to alleviate the administrative, financial, and psychological burdens of accessing textbooks that students currently experience. Recommendations were developed on baseline policies and regulations to:

• Improve access to required instructional materials.
• Provide guidance on maximizing, leveraging, or adjusting existing system resources to support a student-centered zero-cost textbook priority
• Establish a robust and sustained open educational resource support infrastructure. and to inform strategies for state-level support and resources needed to enhance campus efforts to adopt zero textbook cost policies and practices.

Laboring on an accelerated timeline, the taskforce focused its recommendations on three areas:

1. Adopting systemwide commitment, goals, and action plans to reduce and eventually eliminate instructional materials costs.
2. Development and revisions of baseline policies and regulations to remove student burdens and empower students' choice and agency.
3. Ensuring a robust professional development and support ecosystem to accelerate the scaling of local transition to OER resources and the development of sustainable ZTC pathways.

BFIM Taskforce Members

Burden-Free Instructional Materials Taskforce Recommendations

The California Legislature Should...

review the 50% law to count faculty directly advancing the adoption and scaling of OER efforts towards the “salaries of classroom instructors” line.

The California Community Colleges Board of Governors should...

adopt a resolution to strengthen equitable student learning and experience by prioritizing the reduction and elimination of instructional materials costs.

The California Community College Chancellor’s Office, in partnership with key State-wide stakeholders, should…

• engage in joint advocacy for ongoing funding to support this work.
• review statutes and regulations to identify ways to ensure students have visibility to the full instructional materials costs prior to registration. This should include providing a system-level low-cost textbook section designation at $30 to expand cost transparency for students prior to registration. Such a move would align with resolutions issued by the Student Senate for California Community Colleges (SSCCC) and the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC)
• assess the need for and deploy technical assistance priorities to colleges, districts, and regions to support local achievement of cost-reduction goals. This includes:
  • helping faculty and staff access, curate, and license open educational resources (OER) including topics such a permissible licensing, copyright, accessibility parameters, and Universal Design for Learning
  • provide graphic design support for the preparation of high-quality materials that are visually diverse, reflecting the continuum of students in California;
  • provide guidance and professional development to support institutions in understanding, aligning, and leveraging existing local resources to accelerate action plans towards zero instructional materials costs campus-wide.
• identify resources and timeline to collect system-wide data to support continuous improvement towards adoption of OER at scale and the achievement of reduced instructional materials cost goals.  Important initial data points include:
  • number and percentage of course sections that are zero textbook cost (ZTC);
  • number and percentage of course sections that have achieved ZTC status by strategy as reported by the XB-12 data element.
• develop new regulations, or revise current regulations, to address the following:
  • mandate colleges to provide annual updates to their respective Board of Trustees on the local level with progress towards zero instructional materials costs;
  • disallow the institutional practice of automatic charging of students for textbooks in order to increase students’ choice in accessing instructional materials;
  • shift the burden of ensuring reliable Internet access from students to institutions to support students’ full participation in the coursework;
  • require that colleges prominently display in the course schedule, by means that may include a link to a separate Internet Webpage, the actual or estimated costs of instructional materials for each staffed course section at the time of registration;
  • require the print for textbooks or course materials as an option, as digital only does not facilitate the full participation of students who may need accommodations.
• review and update the Student Fee Handbook to reflect the system’s commitment to burden-free instructional materials and explicitly prohibit practices that create unnecessary burdens for students.
• launch a comprehensive review of student support and instructional programming funding and allowable expenditures and provide recommendations to maximize funding flexibility to directly support students in acquiring instructional materials.
• remove student burdens related to receiving timely support to cover the costs of instructional materials.
• establiprioritize the strengthening and expansion of professional development, communities of practice and discipline-specific peer sharing support, such as liaisons, networks and communities established by the ASCCC.sh College Buys procurement opportunities to reduce the cost of course supplies.
•  develop and mature a system-wide mechanism for curating and sharing effective practices and strategies for how colleges and districts can lower costs using different funding models, to accelerate college adoption of sustainable strategies and shift the burden from students by leveraging existing system resources and joint advocacy for additional ongoing investment.
• incentivizing the adoption of OER by establishing a system-wide OER platform and identifying resources to support it.  Minimum requirements include:
  • allows faculty to create, host, share, and modify teaching and learning materials (e.g., textbooks, homework, presentations, question banks, and worksheets) with an emphasis on interoperability, security, modification/customization, accessibility, and scalability;
  • allows users to print openly licensed materials at low cost;
  • provides predictive analytics to enable effective teaching and learning;
  • provides system-level data and transparent public-facing data dashboard about repository usage and OER adoptions.

Community College District Leaders should…

• develop local goals and action plans, with clear expectations and timelines, to reduce and eventually eliminate instructional materials costs by 2030. The goals and action plans need to be supported by state and local enabling conditions, including implementation of regulations with fidelity, resource strategies, adequate data infrastructure, and a robust professional development/peer-to-peer learning ecosystem.
• ensure the compliance of transparency statutes and regulations and implement additional student-centered policies and practices to ensure students have visibility to the full instructional materials costs prior to registration.
• foster the expansion of sustainable resources by promoting open pedagogy and OER adoption by prioritizing open-licensing and showcasing approaches to involving students in resource development.
• collect local data to support continuous improvement towards adoption of OER and the achievement of reduced instructional materials cost goals (e.g., instructional materials costs by certificate and degree programs).
• support the evolution of campus bookstores and strengthen their roles in scaling OER and removing student burdens related to acquiring required instructional materials.
• effectively use resources allocated it the State budget to strengthen local-level coordination of the OER infrastructure and support campus-level OER coordinators to help faculty and staff with the transition (development, adoption, and use) to OER.
• endorse the value of adopting OER and practices that reduce and eliminate instructional materials costs in faculty tenure and sabbatical review.