Citrus College is planning to integrate a new billing system at the Owl Bookshop in the near future, but has not specified when faculty and students will be able to use it.
In a presentation to the Academic Senate at Citrus College in February, Public Services Librarian Sarah Bosler said faculty will have the option to use an automatic billing system for their courses when it becomes available.
Automatic billing, or inclusive access, allows colleges and universities to automatically bill students for e-books, homework systems and other digital materials upon enrollment in a course, the Open Educational Resources Initiative website said. Publishers can also offer discounts on materials for some classes through the system.
At Citrus College, charges would be made to students’ accounts shortly after the start of a course, Owl Bookshop Manager Eric Magallon said. Before the billing date, students will have the chance to opt out of the system.
He said to think of it as a “free trial” or “cutoff” period, in which students could switch or drop courses. For an automatic billing system at Citrus to be transparent, Magallon said the “cutoff” date must be clearly published, and that faculty must remind students.
The advantages of the system, Magallon said, are that students will have the course materials they need on the first day of class, and, according to him, for a much cheaper price than elsewhere.
Students will still have the option to purchase their materials elsewhere, such as on the CitrusMobile app or Amazon, Magallon said.
On its website, the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges has expressed concerns that inclusive access does not improve the long-term issue of textbook affordability for college students, and that an opt-out or opt-in system could cause transparency issues.
Bosler, who is the Academic Senate open educational resources liaison for Citrus College, said in an email that she hopes course sections offering zero-cost texts and open educational resources will be clearly marked in bookstore listings.
The ASCCC Open Educational Resources initiative aims to reduce the cost of textbooks and learning materials for students through the use of “teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use,” in the form of modules, lectures, simulations and other digital media.
A problem that inclusive access may cause, the website said, is that a student who fails to opt-out can be hit with unexpected costs, and eventually lose access to the materials.
The integration of inclusive access at Citrus College will have to wait for a while, Magallon said, likely until 2022.
“The bookstore is almost completed with system changes” to its new bookstore interface, Magallon said in an email. “The problem is that Inclusive access, if the district decides to embrace the idea, will have to be handled by the new vendor that will take over the running of the bookstore at the end of the year,” which the district will choose from a request for proposal sent July 27.
He said the bookstore will likely be run by an outside company that is separate from the other campus retail services.
