Towards Development of OER Derived Custom-Built Open Textbooks: A Baseline Survey of University Teachers at the University of the South Pacific

Textbook prices have soared over the years, with several studies revealing many university students are finding it difficult to afford textbooks. Fortunately, two innovations – open educational resources (OER) and open textbooks – hold the potential to increase textbook affordability. Experts, though, have stated the obvious: that students can save money through open textbooks only if teachers are willing to develop and use them. Considering both the high price of textbooks and the benefits offered by OER and open textbooks, the aim of this study was to assess the University of the South Pacific (USP) teachers’ willingness towards development of custom-built OER derived open textbooks for their courses with a focus on providing a foundation for strategies to promote open textbook development at USP. This paper reports the findings of an online survey of 39 USP teachers. The results show that 17 teachers were willing to develop OER derived custom-built open textbooks for their courses. Besides this, there are findings relating to six important areas: teachers’ motivation to develop open textbooks; the frequency of more than one prescribed textbook per course; teachers’ awareness of the costs of the prescribed textbooks; the average cost of prescribed textbooks in a course; teachers’ awareness and utilization of OER and open textbooks; and teachers’ perceived barriers to using OER and types of challenges they encounter while using OER. These findings have been discussed in relation to research studies on OER and open textbooks.

Textbook prices have soared over the years, with several studies revealing many university students are finding it difficult to afford textbooks. Fortunately, two innovations -open educational resources (OER) and open textbooks -hold the potential to increase textbook affordability. Experts, though, have stated the obvious: that students can save money through open textbooks only if teachers are willing to develop and use them. Considering both the high price of textbooks and the benefits offered by OER and open textbooks, the aim of this study was to assess the University of the South Pacific (USP) teachers' willingness towards development of custom-built OER derived open textbooks for their courses with a focus on providing a foundation for strategies to promote open textbook development at USP. This paper reports the findings of an online survey of 39 USP teachers. The results show that 17 teachers were willing to develop OER derived custom-built open textbooks for their courses. Besides this, there are findings relating to six important areas: teachers' motivation to develop open textbooks; the frequency of more than one prescribed textbook per course; teachers' awareness of the costs of the prescribed textbooks; the average cost of prescribed textbooks in a course; teachers' awareness and utilization of OER and open textbooks; and teachers' perceived barriers to using OER and types of challenges they encounter while using OER. These findings have been discussed in relation to research studies on OER and open textbooks.

Introduction
Textbook prices have clearly spiralled upward in recent years; between 1978 and 2012 textbook costs in the United States of America have risen an alarming 812% (Perry, 2012). Hallam (2012) pointed out that the textbook industry thrives on the notion of 'prescribed textbooks,' with more students purchasing textbooks when told to do so by their teacher. In a study conducted in the United Kingdom, 83% of students purchased textbooks when prescribed by the teacher, compared with 30% who purchased textbooks simply due to recommendation (Carpenter, Bullock, & Potter, 2006). Sadly, it is not uncommon to see teachers prescribe multiple textbooks when they cannot find a single textbook that meets the learning objectives of their course (Wiley, Green, & Soares, 2012).
Several studies have revealed the difficulty university students face in affording textbooks. In a 2011 survey of 1,905 undergraduate students, 70% of students reported not purchasing at least one prescribed textbook due to cost, despite 78% believing they would do worse in the course without their own copy of the prescribed text (Allen, 2011).
Similarly, according to a 2013 survey of 2,039 students from more than 150 different university campuses, 65% of students indicated they had decided against buying a textbook because it was too expensive, 48% said the cost of textbooks had an impact on how many or which classes they took, and 94% of the students who had avoided buying a prescribed textbook said they were concerned that doing so would negatively affect their grade in that course (Senack, 2014). These surveys indicate that when students do not have their own copy of the prescribed textbooks, they lag behind, compromise their learning outcomes, and increase their chances of failing their course (Acker, 2011;Allen, 2011;Graydon, Urbach-Buholz, & Kohen, 2011;Morris-Babb & Henderson, 2012;Senack, 2014). The above discussion illustrates that the high cost of textbooks has a cumulative adverse impact on higher education that requires a solution.
Fortunately, an innovation known as open textbooks holds the potential to increase textbook affordability (Hilton & Wiley, 2011;Okamoto, 2013). Essentially, "Open textbooks are similar to traditional textbooks in terms of content; however, they are generally available for free in digital format, along with low-cost print copies" (Hilton, Gaudet, Clark, Robinson, & Wiley, 2013, p. 38). Several open textbooks initiatives have emerged lately, promising to address the problem of textbook affordability for students.
In a survey of open textbook adoption in three high school science courses, Wiley, Hilton, Ellington, and Hall (2012) report that open textbooks cost over 50% less than traditional textbooks without loss of quality of learning outcomes as measured by standardized tests. In the area of higher education, Bliss, Hilton, Wiley, and Thanos (2013), in a survey of over 125 students and 11 teachers from seven colleges, found that the majority of students and teachers were satisfied using open textbooks, valued the cost savings, and acknowledged the texts as being of high quality. These findings were supported in the results of a recently published survey: Senack (2014) reported that 82% of students said free online access to a textbook (with the option of buying a hard  (Bliss et al., 2013;Senack, 2014;Wiley, Green, et al., 2012). The OER based approach to open textbook development has three important benefits: Textbooks can be built upon existing OER rather than developing from scratch; because OER can be edited or abandoned at less cost than commercial adoption, teachers risk less when developing with vetted OER materials (Acker, 2011); and OER reduces the time lag between the development of textbooks and their delivery, and enables reuse, recontextualization, and customization to meet the course learning outcomes (Baraniuk, 2013 (Punch, 2005).
Thus, this study adopted the descriptive (survey) study. As a descriptive study, no specific conceptual framework or theory was applied. According to Koul (2009) Figure 1 illustrates the questionnaire design. The questionnaire included skip logic or routing questions. Skip logic "refers to a respondent taking an alternative path through a questionnaire depending on his or her answer to an earlier question" (Schonlau, Fricker, & Elliott, 2002, p. 30). For example, as illustrated in Figure 1

Sample
The target population for this study was 229 USP teachers including professors, associate professors, senior lecturers, lecturers, and assistant lecturers. These teachers were selected as they coordinate courses and have the authority to prescribe textbooks for their courses. A simple random sampling technique was used to draw 175 samples from the target population as it was the only technique allowing every element of the population the same probability of being selected, in turn reducing sampling bias (Muijs, 2004;Thompson, 2012

Survey Analysis
The data gathered through the online questionnaire administered via Google Forms were exported to an MS-Excel worksheet for analysis based on the objectives of the study. The findings of the study are discussed in the next section.

Results
Out

A. Teacher Demographics
Of the 39 teachers who completed the survey, 17 were lecturers, followed by assistant lecturers (n = 13), senior lecturers (n = 5), associate professors (n = 3), and subject coordinators (n = 1). The gender distribution of the respondents was 67% male (n = 26) and 33% female (n = 13). Fifty-one percent of the respondents were between 26 and 40 years old, 33% were between 41 and 55 years old, and the rest, 15%, represented age

B. Prescribed Textbooks Status
In the second section of the survey, questions were designed in such a way that the frequency of textbooks prescribed, frequency of more than one prescribed textbook per course, teachers' awareness of the costs of the prescribed textbooks, and average cost of prescribed textbooks in a course could be revealed.

Frequency with which teachers prescribe textbooks for their course.
Teachers were asked how often they prescribed textbooks for their courses; the data showed that 36 out of 39 teachers were involved in the practice of prescribing textbooks.
An inspection of Table 1 will further reveal that 69.24% (n = 27) of teachers 'very frequently/frequently' prescribed textbooks for their courses, while 23.08% (n = 9) 'occasionally/rarely' prescribed textbooks, and 7.69% (n = 3) 'never' prescribed textbooks for their courses. Frequency of more than one textbook prescribed per course.
Those teachers (n = 36) who reported prescribing textbooks were asked how often they prescribed more than one textbook per course. As given in Table 2, 47.22% (n = 17) claimed that they rarely prescribed more than one textbook per course; a combined total of 30.56% (n = 11) reported 'very frequent/frequent/occasional' prescription of more than one textbook per course; and 22.22% (n = 8) of teachers stated that they never prescribed more than one textbook per course.  Teachers' awareness of textbook prices before prescription.
Teachers (n = 36) who prescribed textbooks were asked how often they were aware of textbook prices before prescribing them. It was found that 27.78% (n = 10) of teachers always knew textbook prices in advance, in contrast to 5.56% (n = 2) who were never aware of textbook prices before prescribing them for their courses (Table 3). Average cost of prescribed textbooks per course.
When asked the average amount students paid for prescribed textbooks in semester 2, 2013 courses, the majority (47.22%) of teachers reported that the average price of prescribed textbooks for their course was between FJD100 to FJD200 (1 FJD is equivalent to 0.55 USD), 16.67% reported average cost within the range of FJD200-300, 11.11% indicated average cost between FJD000-100, while 25% said that they were not sure of the price (Table 4).

OER awareness and understanding.
To guage awareness and understanding of OER, teachers were first asked about the former. From the total 39 teachers, 82% (n = 32) affirmed that they were aware of OER, while 18% (n = 7) admitted that they were not aware of OER. To guage understanding, those teachers (n = 32) who claimed to be familiar with OER were then asked to explain what the term OER meant to them. Open responses indicated that the majority of teachers who claimed knowledge of OER basically had a fair understanding of the OER concept, though without much in-depth erudition on its benefits and convolutions.
Below are some of the more precise responses: Open educational resources -free online resources that can be freely used in the development of a course without infringing copyright.
OER to me is pathway to achieve Education for All.
Free educational materials available online.
Educational materials that are accessible to and can be used by the general public for free of charge.
Resources that can be used for teaching & learning as well as for research purposes and are available free and freely accessible.

Use of OER.
Teachers (n = 32) who claimed familiarity with OER were asked whether they used OER content in their teaching or course delivery. Regardless of their familiarity with OER, 31.25% (n = 10) reported to have never used OER, while of the 68.75% (n = 22) who claimed to have used OER, only 12.50% (n = 4) utilized OER to a great extent (Table 5). Barriers to using OER.
Those teachers (n = 10) who reported awareness of OER but having never used them were asked to identify and rate what they considered to be the most significant barriers to OER use from a list of 12 barrier statements; these are summarized in Table 6 in rank order, frequency, percentage, and barrier strength on a scale of '1' (strongly disagree) to '5' (strongly agree). The greatest barriers identified were time limitations restricting accessing relevant OER, inadequate training on OER, insufficient multimedia skills to use OER, uncertainties over copyright-related practices, and difficulties with finding appropriate and quality OER. This was followed by lack of instructional design support and incentives to use OER. Lack of OER policies, insufficient support from management, lack of role models, and lack of quality OER were the bottommost barriers.  Table 6 Barriers to Using OER

Ways of using OER.
Amongst the teachers (n = 22) using OER, it was found that 68.18% (n = 15) were involved in the practice of reusing OER content in its original form, while 18.18% (n = 4) were revising the content, and only 13.64% (n = 3) were remixing the content with other open content to create something new (Table 7). This exhibits that USP teachers are more comfortable with using OER in an 'as is' form. This situation may exist due to their lack of ability to repurpose OER for more contextualized use. Conversely, three teachers reported that they did not face any difficulty using OER.
Upon further investigation, the data revealed that these teachers (n = 3) were primarily

D. Willingness Towards Development of OER Derived Custom-Built Open Textbooks
The final section of the survey was designed to identify teachers willing to develop OER derived custom-built open textbooks for their courses. Those teachers who were willing to develop were asked to identify possible motivating factors, while the unwilling teachers were asked to give reasons for their unwillingness. Such information shall be useful in formulating strategies for preparing teachers for OER based custom-built open textbook development.

Willingness to develop OER derived custom-built open textbooks.
As Table 9 illustrates, 43.59% (n = 17) of teachers reported they planned to develop custom-built OER derived open textbooks for some or all of their courses in the near future, while a small minority of 7.69% (n = 3) said that they would not be willing to

Motivators towards OER derived open textbook development.
Those teachers (n = 17) who stated willingness to develop open textbooks were asked to identify and rate the strength of motivating factors that influenced their decision from a preselected list of 10 possible motivator statements.  Discussion Bliss et al. (2013)