Nicolet College Surpasses $1.5 Million Mark in Textbook Savings for Students

The trend of students getting free college textbooks and other no-cost learning materials continues to grow at Nicolet with the total students have saved now over $1.5 million. 

And that number is only expected to grow in the future, said Cindy Domaika, Open and Inclusive Academics manager at Nicolet. 

“The cost of attending college is a huge factor for many of our students and this is just one way we’ve been able to ease the financial challenges of earning the college education that will help them get ahead in life,” Domaika said. 

“We’ve heard time and again how students have benefited from this program and we are committed to serving even more students in the future. For many, it’s a real game changer that can save them many thousands of dollars over their college careers.” 

In academia the initiative is known as Open Education Resources, or OER. Domaika was instrumental in bringing the next-generation learning materials to Nicolet in 2018. 

The majority of the instructional materials come from oercommons.org, a vast, content-rich website where educators from across the globe openly share a wide variety of instructional material that is available at no cost. 

Sources range from electronic textbooks to videos and PowerPoint presentations to a wide variety of other content that is available entirely in an electronic format. 

Domaika stressed that all of the material that makes it into a Nicolet OER class goes through a rigorous review process to ensure it meets academic standards. 

“We make sure that all of the material is peer reviewed by faculty at other colleges and universities,” Domaika said. “The quality has to be there in order to make it into a Nicolet course.” 

Every Nicolet class has a list of course competencies that outline the subject matter to be learned in that course. 

To gather the educational material that covers all of the competencies, Nicolet instructors and Domaika work hand in hand to find the appropriate course content that students can access for free. 

Nicolet Nursing Instructor Krista Polomis was recently involved in project to expand the OER learning materials available to Nursing students, writing a chapter for an Advanced Nursing Skills textbook. 

“I saw it as an incredible honor when I was asked if I would be interested in writing a chapter for the textbook,” Polomis said. “I see how valuable OER resources are for students – and how expensive traditional Nursing textbooks are – so I had to jump at this wonderful opportunity.” 

Polomis wrote a chapter on how to insert a nasal tube to gain access to a patient’s stomach and its contents. The Advanced Nursing Skills textbook that includes the chapter Polomis wrote is expected to be available to students starting this fall. 

While Nicolet was an early adopter and one of the first colleges in the state to incorporate OER resources into the classroom, many other technical colleges across the state have since seen the benefits and adopted OER resources as well. 

To develop OER even further, the Wisconsin Technical College System has included a request for $3 million in its 2023-25 Biennial Budget Proposal. The money would be devoted to expanding these free learning resources across all 16 colleges in the WTCS and play a significant part in reducing student loan debt, according to a WTCS budget position paper. 

“Student debt not only creates a hardship for Wisconsin families, but also creates a strain on the economy because debt lowers credit scores and limits purchasing power,” the paper states. 

“This ultimately means individuals with debt are less able to participate and help grow the economy. Providing Wisconsin students with Open Educational Resources (OER), which are free-of-cost course materials, would be a state investment that will assist in alleviating student debt and future negative implications on the economy.”