Pierce College professor saves students $1 million through open education resources

After years of teaching math, Professor David Lippman was sick of requiring his students to pay upwards of $150 for a textbook. Used books were available at a slight discount, but students were forced to pay an extra fee to access online support materials unless they purchased a brand new copy.

Lippman, who began teaching at Pierce in Fall 2000, finally made the decision to move away from the lessons found in traditional textbooks. He began to carefully write and compile his own content, which he now provides to students at little to no cost.

“I basically sat down and, over a period of time, began to write my own text to replace the book for my Math 107 course,” he said. “I would hardly call that first version a formal textbook, but I wrote up enough content to reach the point where I didn’t need a book.”

Lippman released the materials under an open license through Creative Commons, which allows anyone to republish or reuse his content as long as they give him credit.

He surveyed his own students to assess their thoughts on the text, and received overwhelmingly positive responses. Several other community colleges around the state – and beyond – have adopted Lippman’s text, and even added their own spin to it when necessary.

An instructor in Arizona took it upon himself to film video tutorials for most of the example questions in Lippman’s textbook. Another instructor lended his own expertise to provide copyediting services for the book, completely free of charge. “Now we have instructional videos to go with the homework we assign, and it’s created content that is comparable to what traditional publishers are producing,” Lippman said.

Several other instructors at Pierce College are involved in the open education resource movement, including Melonie Rasmussen. She and Lippman worked together on an open resource for a pre-calculus course, which is now available for use at all community and technical colleges statewide, and is also being used at high schools and colleges around the country. The project was funded through the Open Course Library Project, which aimed to create open course material for the top 82 enrolled courses in the state. Together, Rasmussen and Lippman built a course with online homework, worksheets, activities, sample assessments and even a syllabus for instructors. “It’s so exciting to see this project accomplishing what we set out to achieve,” he said.

By Lippman’s estimate, the open education resources he has worked on have saved students somewhere in the ballpark of a million dollars. Although he admits that some subjects are lacking high-quality open resources at the moment, he believes this is the way of the future for higher education.

For students under financial pressure, open resources and affordable texts can make a world of difference in their ability to complete their degree and achieve their goals.

“Beyond just saving students money, our real goal is to help students succeed by ensuring they all have access on the first day of class to the course materials they need,” Lippman added.