Investigating students’ views on the cost of, and access to, textbooks in post-secondary education in Aotearoa New Zealand

This national research project focuses on students’ views and experiences of the cost of, and access to, textbooks in post-secondary education in New Zealand. The aim of the project is to investigate the impact of textbook costs on student behaviour, including choice of programme and/or institution, and on student outcomes.

This project aims to extend a baseline study conducted by a team at the University of Otago in 2015, which focused on “the possible effects that textbook costs may be having on study behaviours of students at one New Zealand tertiary institution” (Stein, Hart, Keaney, & White (2017)).

Students, teachers, librarians – we need your help!

This is an open, community-based project and we need your help. Working together, we achieve more than working alone.

We invite all tertiary education institutions, staff, and students to assist the national Centre for Open Education Practice (COEP) in promoting this survey with New Zealand post-secondary learners. The results will provide valuable baseline data regarding the affordability and access to learning materials.

Please visit the resources page to download digital posters, images, and copy text for social media to assist in promoting survey responses.

Key points and quicklinks

Who should participate?	All tertiary education students studying at Universities, Polytechnics, Institutes of Technology, and Wānanga in Aotearoa New Zealand
Ethics approval	Otago Polytechnic, Reference No. 820
Survey link	https://oer.nz/textbooks
Prize draw	Survey respondents can choose to go into a random prize draw, with the chance to win one of ten $50 supermarket vouchers.
Primary researchers	Claire Goode, Learning & Teaching Specialist / Principal Lecturer, Otago Polytechnic Dr Wayne Mackintosh, UNESCO / ICDE Chair in OER, Otago Polytechnic
Research collaborators	Maansa Bajaj Prakash, Doctoral Student, University of Canterbury Associate Professor Cheryl Brown, Co-Director, e-Learning Research Lab, University of Canterbury Zhanni Luo, Doctoral Student, University of Canterbury
Open data / Open Science	Anonymous survey results will be dedicated to the public domain and shared openly. The survey instrument is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. All reports and publications from the research team will be published under a free cultural works approved open licence.
Closing date for submission	15 October 2019

Access to survey results

A summary of the findings will be presented at the 2019 National OER practitioner and leadership symposium on 5 December 2019 in Dunedin.

Please sign up as an individual member of the COEP to receive notifications about the Centre’s work and results of our inaugural research project.

Image attribution: Books dedicated to the public domain under CC0