In the 2012/2013 academic year, Algonquin College initiated discussions with four publishers, Wiley, Nelson, Pearson, and McGraw Hill, as part of the development of an initiative aimed at ensuring that students had access to their required resources at the start of classes. This was in response to concerns voiced by faculty that students were delaying purchasing their course materials—or not purchasing them at all—and could thus be suffering academically. The ever-increasing cost of course materials, it was reasoned, could be playing a role in the willingness and ability of students to acquire the resources that they needed. Thus, as part of these initial discussions, the College worked to secure agreements from publishers to offer reduced-cost textbooks in a digital format.
In the Winter semester of 2013, Algonquin College piloted its eText initiative. As part of this pilot, publishers provided digital course materials at no cost to the six programs that were included. Deployment was done through the learning management system and an eReader known as VitalSource was used. Approximately 2300 resources were deployed to 750 students.
In the Fall semester of 2013, the eText initiative was expanded to 34 programs. Resource deployment was again done through the learning management system and the same eReader, VitalSource, was used. The expanded eText initiative resulted in the deployment of approximately 16 800 resources to 3 600 students. New to the eText initiative, however, was the introduction of an inclusive access model known as the Institutional Pay Model (IPM): courses included in the IPM had their required resources charged as part of a student’s fees. The IPM’s functioning was two-fold: it ensured that students would have access to their resources on the first day of class since they would have already been charged for them; and it helped to secure reduced-cost materials from publishers by guaranteeing an almost 100% sell-through rate of a resource for an IPM course.
After the 2013/2014 academic year, the eText/IPM initiative continued to grow. In the Fall semester of 2014, 32 000 resources were deployed to 9 900 students; as well, an end-to-end deployment solution known as the Digital Resource Portal was adopted, moving resource deployment away from using the learning management system. In the Fall semester of 2015, 38 000 resources were deployed to 14 000 students; additionally, a new eReader platform, Kivuto’s Texidium, was adopted. By Fall of 2016, approximately 140 programs across Algonquin College’s three campuses were using eTexts and about 35 000 resources were deployed to 12 000 students. With the widespread impact and rapid growth of the eText/IPM initiative, Algonquin College now finds itself as one of the largest inclusive access model institutions in North America.
As might be expected with an undertaking as disruptive as the eText/IPM initiative in an ecosystem as complex as a public post-secondary institution, Algonquin College’s eText/IPM journey has been far from uncontentious. During the current academic year (2017/2018), the Algonquin College Students’ Association took a strong stance against the IPM. As well, some faculty members and students have been outspoken about their opposition to the eText/IPM initiative. For its part, the College has signalled a course change from current state eText/IPM, targeted for the 2019/2020 academic year. Thus, this research project is a chance to begin to explore and understand the impact the eText/IPM initiative has had on the stakeholders in the College community as well as look to future and/or unresolved issues which may weigh on upcoming discussions of pay models. For other institutions—especially ones looking to implement inclusive models of either own—it is a view of considerations beyond the mighty technical hurdles such an initiative presents.
