The #TextbookBroke campaign began in the United States as a way to showcase the high prices of textbooks and engage in conversations with college and university communities surrounding affordability. This campaign’s goal is to spread awareness surrounding open textbooks and OER more generally, as well as ensure that students are talking about the price of educational materials, and thinking critically about the resources that they are assigned.

Campaign Steps:

1. Identify goals of bringing #TextbookBroke to your campus.
2. Look at materials and plans that already exist.
3. Reach out to your university campus and bookstore to see if they would like to work with you.
4. Tie the campaign into your broader advocacy efforts.

#TextbookBrokeBC

As a result of the success of the #TextbookBroke campaign, the Alma Mater Society of UBC Vancouver (AMS), the Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS), and the Student Union of the Okanagan at UBC Okanagan (SUO), ran a #TextbookBrokeBC campaign in September 2015 and January 2016. The goal of the campaign was similar to the goal of the U.S. campaign: to engage students in conversations surrounding the cost of educational resources and make them aware of alternatives, such as Open Textbooks and OER.

The open community is just that: open. The aim is to ensure that openness is a practice that is used in not only the promotion of OER, but in their adoption and creation as well. In that spirit, the #TextbookBrokeBC materials have been offered openly by BC Federation of Students (BCFS)

Media Attributions

• TextbookBrokeBC Bookmark © AMS UBC. CC BY 4.0 Licence.