On Tuesday, Sept. 19, an Open Educational Resource workgroup gathered six attendees and facilitator Dr. Lauri DeRuiter-Willems. The workgroup met from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. and discussed the importance of Open Educational Resources (OER) for education. All the attendees were currently in the work field surrounding education, which allowed the meeting to be very crucial for them. When the meeting officially started, everybody gave an introduction, discussing their experience with OER. They were also instructed to talk about issues regarding textbooks. They were asked to explain one good thing about textbook rentals and one good thing about purchasing a textbook. After that, they were asked to voice how textbook rentals or purchased textbooks could improve. Some opinions expressed included how it can sometimes be beneficial to have a hard copy of the text in front of the student, since they can highlight and annotate in textbooks that they personally own. Even though textbook rentals cut the cost for students when receiving textbooks required for a class, a student might not even use the textbook for the semester, which allows the cost of the rental textbook fee to add up.
