Document Type
Report
Department/Program
Library
Pub Date
11-1-2019
Place of Publication
Williamsburg, VA
Publisher
William & Mary
Abstract
In fall 2019, William & Mary Libraries embarked on a concerted effort to learn more about course materials adopted on its campus. In order to perform an environmental scan, staff from the libraries participated in several activities: administering a student survey, conducting a series of faculty focus groups and running a cross-campus task force on textbook affordability. This document explains the faculty focus group activity known as the “textbook listening tour.”
The listening tour was structured largely based on an earlier effort that took place at Temple University Libraries. Bell & Johnson (2019) used the tour as an opportunity to gain insight into challenges and issues around faculty selection of course materials. The “tour” at W&M offered faculty a forum to inform library staff on their views on and approaches to course materials adoption, including awareness of Open Educational Resources (OER), where to find them and perceived barriers to their adoption. It should be noted that while the effort was sometimes referred to as “textbook adoption” since that is the terminology faculty are more familiar with, we were clear to indicate from the outset of each session that our scope included the broader “course materials adoption.”
Recommended Citation
Taliaferro, M.G., Randolph, A.R., & Ramey, J. W&M Faculty Listening Tour Executive Summary. (2019). Williamsburg, VA: William & Mary. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.wm.edu/librariespubs/89.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
