UWF health sciences and administration faculty members publish first textbook on Pressbooks

Two faculty members in the University of West Florida Department of Health Sciences and Administration have published the institution’s first Pressbooks Open Educational Resource textbook, “Medical Terminology for Healthcare Professions.”

Dr. Andrea Nelson, clinical assistant professor and Usha Kundu, MD College of Health high impact practice fellow and liaison, and Katherine Greene, adjunct instructor, collaborated to provide UWF students with an e-textbook and digital learning activities at no cost. Pressbooks is a book creation and hosting platform for textbooks and monographs that are created as open access resources with Creative Commons licenses.

Nelson said the University’s contract with Pressbooks, coordinated by Stephanie Clark, dean of the UWF Libraries, provided the “perfect solution” as she was considering updating the course materials to something more engaging and accessible for the medical terminology course.

“The hardest part of teaching courses is finding the right resources,” Nelson said. “This offers faculty the opportunity to adopt, adapt, or create a resource to fit their unique course needs, while saving students’ money.”

In past semesters of the Medical Terminology course, Nelson said the required e-textbook with access code cost students approximately $60. By providing the resources for free, the University is able to save students an estimated $35,000 per academic year, considering the number of sections and students enrolled in fall, spring and summer semesters.

Clark said the UWF Libraries has been making efforts to enhance textbook affordability on campus for the last few years, beginning with providing print copies of required undergraduate textbooks. They’ve recently expanded to support faculty using Open Educational Resources as required texts, and she said encouraging them to create their own course materials and publishing them on Pressbooks is the next stage.

“From the library perspective, we’re fulfilling our mission by supporting faculty scholarship and publishing while also supporting efforts from across campus to reduce textbook costs for students,” Clark said.

To learn more about Pressbooks, visit libguides.uwf.edu.