Susan is passionate about providing high quality Open Educational Resources for her students and 10 years ago discovered and began using an Open textbook (Open Intro Statistics) and online homework system (My Open Math) for her STAT 116 course. Her goal for the near future is to, after many years of searching, find an open textbook for another statistics course or to create a zero-cost course pack for the students. Susan’s Chair Patrick Montgomery also had this to say “The work to support an evolving discipline such as statistics is ongoing, as new examples appear regularly and can only be included in the classroom by either buying new and expensive textbooks or by spending the time and effort to incorporate the information into in-house course packs. Susan is a department leader in building online resources for her classes and has made Statistics even more affordable.”
Susan has been a faculty member at Camosun since 1998, and I first interviewed her back in 2021 about her experiences moving to online teaching during the pandemic. Since then, I have learned that Susan is passionate about providing students with low and no-cost course materials (she received an Open Education Recognition Award in March 2024) and I wanted to find out more about her journey into creating course resources and adapting open textbooks.
After studying in China, Susan went to Simon Fraser University where she received her master’s degree in Statistics. When she came to Camosun, she was the first statistician in the department and in addition to teaching statistics courses, selected software and textbooks for them, took care of credit transfer and articulation, and wrote lab manuals for using statistical software which she sold in the Camosun bookstore and put online. “I was also the textbook rep for both Math and Statistics for 15 years and was able to negotiate textbook discounts for students.” Statistical software was also pricy, so Susan negotiated lower prices where she could, until moved to Excel and R which was free for students to use at the College or at home.
Then Susan learned about open textbooks from a BCcampus presentation at an articulation meeting. “I began searching for an open textbook for statistics but couldn’t find a suitable one that included enough problem sets. So, in the meantime, I kept trying to make the textbooks we were using more affordable, going from hard-cover to soft-cover to loose-leaf. Then finally, in 2014, I found an open textbook for introductory statistics, it was one of the only two at the time recommended by the American Statistical Society. And that’s how I started.”
When she flipped through the open textbook, Susan was satisfied that she could use it, provided she moved some of the content around. What really sold her, though, was that it presented real data and had a free homework system that integrated problems from the textbook. “We discussed the book in the department, tested it out, then in 2017, we began formally using it for all the sections of intro statistics, and have used it ever since.” In addition to the open textbook, the department also uses an online assignment system called MyOpenMath which is relatively easy to use to create and share problem sets to match the textbook.
Another course that Susan teaches was not as easy to convert to a free textbook. For the Introduction to Probability and Statistics course, instructors use a textbook by Jay Devore which is the gold standard of texts for this content. “Everything in it is tested and the problems are all from engineering and sciences, meaning our students can relate to them. The problem is that the cost of the textbook increases every year. Eventually I found an open textbook for the course, which was really written as a supplement for the Devore text, so, I adopted it in 2017 and used it for three years. While it doesn’t have problem sets, through fair dealing I was able to use questions from the Devore textbook and post them in D2L, and used the Devore textbook as a reference text.” During COVID, Susan switched back to the Devore text e-book to make it easier for students to learn online, but in 2021, she moved to creating course packs containing partial notes and problem sets and having them available in D2L while retaining the Devore text as an optional text only. But she and another instructor of this course continue to work towards finding an open textbook or make a zero-cost course pack for it.
Every year when Susan attends articulation meetings, she asks others to share the open educational resources they use at their institutions. “This year, the chair of the articulation committee made  it a required institutional report item, which is wonderful because we get to see what open source textbooks each school is using. It is great to see that Camosun is doing very well on this front!”
I asked Susan why providing zero cost resources for students is so important to her. “I was an international student when I came here, and textbooks were so expensive that most of us could not afford to buy them. Many students struggle financially, often having to work to pay rent and buy food. When I asked some students what they would use the money saved from buying textbooks for, almost all said they’d use it to buy food. I have always felt going with zero-cost resources can help students, but my bottom line is that any textbook I use needs to support their learning.” At the same time, Susan recognizes that some students prefer having access to a textbook, so she always provides at least one optional or reference textbook in courses that do not have a required text.
I asked Susan what she, and other instructors moving to zero textbook cost (ZTC) courses, needs from Camosun to sustain her practice. “First, it’s important to have a community with supports like yourself and CETL. Awareness is also very important because if faculty don’t know about open textbooks, they can’t consider them. And finally, creating a list of who at the College is using which open textbooks, and sharing that information, would make these resources more accessible for everyone. Faculty at Camosun are passionate about student learning and well-being, and once they know more about what open textbooks and supports are available, more instructors will want to get involved.”
Susan told me she appreciates what we are doing already at Camosun to share news about Open Education and ZTC courses. “Many instructors have been doing this work for awhile, but nobody knew it. Acknowledging and sharing that information is encouraging for instructors who are already doing it and also helpful for those who have not yet. It takes a lot of time to develop open resources, and Scheduled Development time is essential for [CCFA] faculty to do this work. Perhaps there could be opportunities for faculty to work together or have discussions about their open education projects as well.” And finally, Susan, as a statistician, recommends collecting data around the impact Open Education has on students (for example, saving money), “because that’s the evidence!” And as students become more aware of how open resources can help them “they may expect more instructors to provide them.”
To round out our discussion, I asked Susan about the statistics for her own courses – how much money have students saved because she provides free course resources? “For my one section of Stat 218 (Probability and Statistics 1), from 2017-2020, students saved $18,000 using the open textbook. Then from 2021-2024, using course packs and an optional textbook, students saved another $24,000. And for Stat 116 (Elementary Statistics), from 2017 to 2024, with an average of six sections a year, students saved approximately $147,000. A total of almost $200,000 – that can buy a lot of bread.”