Doctoral Students’ Perspectives on Textbooks and Open Educational Resources: Needs, Impact, and Future Directions

Abstract

While discussions of textbook needs have typically focused on undergraduate students, doctoral students face some unique challenges related to course materials. Their positionality as students and also potentially future faculty, researchers, or instructors can provide useful insight as academic libraries seek opportunities to promote open textbooks. This article reports on the results of semi-structured in-depth interviews with 12 doctoral students in the College of Education at the Pennsylvania State University. Findings suggest that they obtain access to required textbooks in different ways and tend to purchase a personal copy of a textbook if they expected to use it in the future for their research. Their course selection was not impacted by the cost of the required textbook, although textbook requirements influenced their perception of the teaching faculty. Some already had experience publishing OER. Some others expressed interest in promoting OER or open access materials, while others expressed skepticism of these initiatives. Many articulated the importance of accessibility. Materials related to older seminal texts, ethnographical works, and methods textbooks were suggested as potential open textbook targets. Implications for academic libraries are discussed.

The Use of Open Educational Resources and Renewable Assignments in Social Work Ph.D. Programs in the United States

“…The Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work (GADE) publishes quality guidelines for social work PhD programs and outlines the core expertise and skills for graduates of social work PhD programs (GADE, 2023). There is a need for research to refine and enrich current teaching and learning practices in social work PhD programs through the integration of OER and renewable assignments considering previous studies related to PhD programs have predominantly focused on student samples (see e.g.,Hosoi et al, 2022;Sousa et al, 2021). The purpose of this study is to address gaps in the knowledge by investigating (1) the prevalence of OER and renewable assignments and (2) faculty perceptions of OER and renewable assignments in PhD programs in the top 100 ranked social work programs in the United States.…”