Author: Ian Linkletter

As part of the BCcampus institutional grant, we secured matching funds to offer grants of up to $8500 CAD for projects which helped achieve Zero Textbook Cost. $33,500 in grants were awarded in total. You can read more about the other recipients on our blog.

What’s your name and position? What school(s) do you work for?

We are working on this project as a team, with the main members being:

• Alex Tait – Assistant Instructor – School of Construction and the Environment
• Julia Alards-Tomalin – Program Head / Instructor – School of Construction and the Environment

Why did you decide to pursue a Zero Textbook Cost approach?

We decided to pursue a Zero Textbook Cost project for a few reasons. One is to create a modern, up-to-date resource for students learning about BC’s ecosystems. The current standard textbook is severely outdated (from 1991) with lots of text and only black and white drawings. It also lacks essential modern information on resources, contemporary plant and wildlife science, and is void of critical context regarding the Indigenous Peoples who have managed these lands since time immemorial. 

The second main reason was to save our students some money. The existing textbook costs students around $65, but our new resource will eliminate that. We are also huge fans of Open Education Resources in general and have worked on several other projects that benefit our students.

In a nutshell, could you describe your project?

Our project is creating “Ecosystems of BC: A Visual Guide“, an Open Education textbook. Our vision for this textbook is a modern learning resource for students to learn about the incredible diversity of BC’s ecosystems with colour photos, colour maps, videos, drone footage, and updated text with descriptions and diagrams. Our project will be hosted on Pressbooks to be available to anyone interested in learning about BC’s ecosystems.

How will the deliverable(s) from your project contribute to Zero Textbook Cost learning at BCIT?

The output of our project will serve as the core textbook for BCIT’s RENR 2300 (Ecosystem Principles and Identification) course, as well as a high quality reference textbook for FNAM 2700 (Wildlife and Habitat Stewardship) and FNAM 2800 (Land Management Principles). Our resource will be free and available to all, eliminating the need for students to pay $65 for the existing required textbook for RENR 2300.

What advice would you give to a BCIT instructor considering adopting ZTC?

We would strongly encourage other BCIT instructors to consider adopting the ZTC approach! Especially in programs with high textbook costs. Whether it’s finding an existing resource or creating one yourselves, we think there is enormous value in reducing costs for students. Life is not getting any less expensive for students, so anything we can do to reduce barriers to entry in post-secondary education is worth pursuing in our opinion. 

What impact do you hope your ZTC project will have on BCIT students?

We hope our ZTC project will at minimum be a useful course textbook and future reference for students in our programs. Some of the text for each ecosystem description has been developed by previous students, and we are working with some current students who are donating photos of plants and wildlife they have taken from across the province. We hope to inspire our students by collaborating with us on a project that extends past their time at BCIT.

Beyond that, the completed Ecosystems of BC: A Visual Guide will be designed for use not only by our department’s 100+ annual students, but also by students at secondary and post-secondary institutions across the entire province, maximizing the Open Education investment for potentially decades to come.

As part of the BCcampus institutional grant, we secured matching funds to offer grants of up to $8500 CAD for projects which helped achieve Zero Textbook Cost. $33,500 in grants were awarded in total. You can read more about the other recipients on our blog.

What’s your name and position? What school(s) do you work for?

Hamid Talebi, I am an instructor at school of energy-CISA program. I teach enterprise network security and Advanced network security courses.

Why did you decide to pursue a Zero Textbook Cost approach?

I chose the Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) approach because I wanted to remove financial barriers for my students and make course materials more accessible. Many students face high costs for textbooks, which can limit their ability to engage fully with the course. By creating an OpenText book, I can provide all students with free, high-quality learning resources while ensuring they have immediate access to the content they need to succeed.

In a nutshell, could you describe your project?

My project involved creating an OpenText book tailored to the specific needs of my course. The book consolidates all essential materials, including lecture notes, examples, and supplementary readings, into a single, easily navigable resource.

How will the deliverable(s) from your project contribute to Zero Textbook Cost learning at BCIT?

The OpenText book directly supports ZTC learning by providing all required course content at no cost. Students no longer need to purchase expensive textbooks, which enhances equity and access in learning.

What advice would you give to a BCIT instructor considering adopting ZTC?

I would encourage instructors to start small, perhaps by identifying a few key resources they can make openly available, and then gradually expand to a full ZTC approach. In doing so, students enjoy the course materials.

What impact do you hope your ZTC project will have on BCIT students?

I hope this ZTC project will reduce financial stress, improve student engagement, and support academic success by providing a centralized, easily accessible learning resource. Ultimately, I want students to feel empowered and confident in their learning, knowing that the necessary materials are readily available and designed to meet their educational needs.

As part of the BCcampus institutional grant, we secured matching funds to offer grants of up to $8500 CAD for projects which helped achieve Zero Textbook Cost. $33,500 in grants were awarded in total. You can read more about the other recipients on our blog.

What’s your name and position? What school(s) do you work for?

We’re Shauna Begley and Tanner Brine, both Faculty & Program Heads in Operations Management at BCIT’s School of Business + Media. Between us, we cover a range of courses focused on data systems, analytics, and business technology.

Why did you decide to pursue a Zero Textbook Cost approach?

The gap was already there. Two of our courses, BSYS 2000 and BSYS 3205, had no textbook at all, just faculty-created materials. That’s not a sustainable or equitable situation for students. For BABI 7800, students were paying out of pocket for a commercial textbook. A ZTC approach made sense because it lets us formalize and improve what we were already building informally, while working toward eliminating a cost for students.

In a nutshell, could you describe your project?

We’re developing an openly-licensed digital textbook called Applied Business Data Modelling Fundamentals. It covers core topics like business data concepts, entity-relationship modelling, normalization, data transformation, and data governance, all grounded in practical, applied business contexts. It’s designed to serve multiple courses at different levels, from introductory to graduate.

How will the deliverable(s) from your project contribute to Zero Textbook Cost learning at BCIT?

Once published, the textbook will be freely available to any BCIT student in the courses it supports, no purchase required. For BSYS 2000 and BSYS 3205, it fills a gap where no resource existed before. For BABI 7800, it lays the foundational groundwork that will eventually allow us to move away from a paid commercial textbook as the resource grows. It will also be deposited in the BCIT Institutional Repository under an open license, so other instructors can adopt or adapt it down the road.

What advice would you give to a BCIT instructor considering adopting ZTC?

Start by looking at what you’re already creating. Most of us have slides, notes, and assignments that essentially function as a course resource. ZTC is an opportunity to pull that together into something students can actually use and keep. One of the best things we did was loop in the instructors who actually teach these courses day to day. They know what students struggle with, what’s missing, and what already works well. Collaborating with them from the start means the final resource is more useful for everyone, and it spreads the workload so no single person is carrying the whole thing. It doesn’t have to be a solo project.

What impact do you hope your ZTC project will have on BCIT students?

Right now, students in these courses are working with a patchwork of faculty-created materials that vary depending on who’s teaching the course. We want to change that. A shared, well-structured textbook means every student gets the same quality foundation regardless of their section or instructor. It also gives the material a level of professionalism and coherence that’s hard to achieve with scattered resources. Over time, as the textbook grows, the cost benefits will follow. But the first win is really about giving students something they can rely on.