BILL ANALYSIS Ó
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | SB 1359|
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UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Bill No: SB 1359
Author: Block (D)
Amended: 8/1/16
Vote: 21
SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE: 9-0, 4/6/16
AYES: Liu, Block, Hancock, Huff, Leyva, Mendoza, Monning, Pan,
Vidak
SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: 7-0, 5/27/16
AYES: Lara, Bates, Beall, Hill, McGuire, Mendoza, Nielsen
SENATE FLOOR: 39-0, 6/2/16
AYES: Allen, Anderson, Bates, Beall, Berryhill, Block,
Cannella, De León, Fuller, Gaines, Galgiani, Glazer, Hall,
Hancock, Hernandez, Hertzberg, Hill, Hueso, Huff, Jackson,
Lara, Leno, Leyva, Liu, McGuire, Mendoza, Mitchell, Monning,
Moorlach, Morrell, Nguyen, Nielsen, Pan, Pavley, Roth, Stone,
Vidak, Wieckowski, Wolk
NO VOTE RECORDED: Runner
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 76-0, 8/18/16 - See last page for vote
SUBJECT: Public postsecondary education: course materials
SOURCE: Author
DIGEST: The bill requires, beginning January 1, 2018, each
campus of the California Community Colleges (CCC) and the
California State University (CSU), and requests each campus of
the University of California (UC), to clearly highlight the
courses that use digital course materials that are free of
charge.
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Assembly Amendments (1) modify the requirement to highlight
courses that use digital materials from those that at least in
part use digital material, to those that exclusively use digital
material; (2) require each campus of the CSU, each participating
campus of the UC, and each CCC district to ensure that the
materials comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities
Act and the federal Copyright Act; and (3) delay implementation
of this bill until January 1, 2018.
ANALYSIS:
Existing federal law, the Higher Education Opportunity Act:
1)Requires each institution of higher education (IHE) that
receives federal financial assistance, to the maximum extent
possible, to:
a) Disclose, on the IHE's online course schedule, the
International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and retail price
information of required and recommended textbooks and
supplemental materials for each course listed in the course
schedule.
b) Include on the IHE's written course schedule a notice
that textbook information is available on the IHE's online
course schedule, and the Web link to that schedule.
2)Provides exceptions to the disclosure requirement as follows:
a) If the ISBN is not available, the IHE is required to
include the author, title, publisher, and copyright date.
b) If the IHE determines that the disclosure of the price
is not practicable for a textbook or supplemental material,
the IHE is required to so indicate by placing the
designation "To Be Determined" in lieu of the price.
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3)Encourages IHEs to also provide to students information
regarding:
a) Available institutional programs for renting textbooks
or for purchasing used textbooks.
b) Available institutional guaranteed textbook buy-back
programs.
c) Available institutional alternative content delivery
programs.
d) Other available institutional cost-saving strategies.
4)Requires each IHE that receives federal financial assistance
to make available to college bookstores that are operated or
affiliated with the institution the most accurate information
available regarding the IHE's course schedule for the
subsequent academic period and the information described in 1)
and 2) above for each course or class offered for the
subsequent academic period.
5)Provides that the information is to be provided to the college
bookstore as soon as is practicable upon the request of the
college bookstore. (United States Code, Title 20, § 1015)
Existing state law:
1)Requires, under the College Textbook Transparency Act, each
campus bookstore at any public postsecondary educational
institution to post in its store or on its website a
disclosure of the retail price policy on new and used
textbooks. (Education Code § 66406.7)
2)Establishes, under the College Textbook Affordability Act, the
Open Educational Resources Adoption Incentive Program to
incentivize faculty to accelerate the adoption of lower cost,
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high-quality, open educational resources (OERs) at campuses of
the CCC and the CSU. This program provides funding for
faculty professional development, professional development for
staff, OER curation activities, curriculum modification and
requisite release time for faculty, and technology support.
(EC § 67420)
3)Establishes the California Digital Open Source Library,
administered by the CSU in coordination with the CCC, for the
purpose of housing open source materials while providing
web-based access for students, faculty and staff to find,
adopt, utilize, or modify course materials for little or no
cost. (EC § 66408)
4)Establishes the California Open Education Resources Council
and requires the council to be responsible for, among other
things, developing a list of 50 strategically selected lower
division courses in the public postsecondary segments for
which high-quality, affordable, digital open source textbooks
and related materials are to be developed or acquired. (EC §
66409)
5)Requires the CSU Trustees and the CCC Board of Governors, and
requests the Regents of the UC, to work with the academic
senates to encourage faculty to give consideration to the
least costly practices in assigning textbooks and to encourage
faculty to disclose to students how new editions of textbooks
are different from previous editions. Existing law also urges
textbook publishers to provide information to faculty when
they are considering what textbooks to order, and to post
information on the publishers' Web sites, including an
explanation of how the newest edition is different from
previous editions. In addition, publishers are asked to
disclose to faculty the length of time they intend to produce
the current edition and provide faculty free copies of each
textbook selected. (Education Code § 66406)
This bill:
1)Requires, beginning January 1, 2018, each campus of the CCC
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and the CSU, and requests each campus of the UC, to do both of
the following:
a) Clearly highlight, in a way that may include the use of
a symbol or logo, in a conspicuous place on the online
campus course schedule, the courses that exclusively use
digital course materials that are free of charge to
students and may have a low-cost option for print versions.
b) Clearly communicate to students that the course
materials used for the courses identified are free of
charge and therefore not required to be purchased.
2)Authorizes course materials to include OERs, institutionally
licensed campus library materials that all students enrolled
in the course have access to use, and other properly licensed
and adopted materials.
3)Requires each campus of the CSU, each participating campus of
the UC, and each CCC district to ensure that the materials
comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and
the federal Copyright Act.
4)Defines the following terms:
a) "Course schedule" is a collection of available classes,
course sections, or both, published electronically, before
the start of an academic term.
b) "OERs' are high-quality teaching, learning, and research
resources that reside in the public domain or have been
released under an intellectual property license, such as a
Creative Commons license, that permits their free use, and
repurposing by others, and may include other resources that
are legally available and free of cost to students. This
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definition provides that OERs include, but are not limited
to, full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks,
faculty-created content, streaming videos, tests, software,
and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to
support access to knowledge.
Comments
Existing federal law. Existing federal law requires each IHE
that receives federal financial assistance, to the maximum
extent possible, to disclose, on the IHE's online course
schedule, the ISBN and retail price information of required and
recommended textbooks and supplemental materials for each course
listed in the course schedule. It appears that IHEs are meeting
this requirement in different ways; many IHEs include a separate
link to textbook pricing information, but do not include the
price next the each course description in the course schedule.
Open Educational Resources. OERs are educational materials that
include textbooks, research articles, videos, assessments, or
simulations that are either licensed under an open copyright
license or are in the public domain. OERs provide no- or
low-cost access and permission to revise, reuse, remix, or
redistribute the materials. OERs enable faculty to customize
learning materials to suit their course objectives, as well as
provides students access to no- or low-cost educational
materials.
Existing efforts to increase access to OERs. The California
Open Education Resources Council reports that it has thus far
selected the 50 courses, identified more than 150 appropriate
OERs for said courses, developed a standardized peer review and
approval process, and recruited faculty to conduct the reviews.
As of December 2015, the California Open Education Resources
Council had identified more than 160 appropriate OER textbooks
for the 50 courses. The California Open Online Library for
Education, known as COOL4Ed, houses open textbooks, open course
materials, open courses, open access journals and articles,
textbook reviews, among other resources.
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[http://www.cool4ed.org/index.html]
The multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online
Teaching (MERLOT), led by the CSU, offers free access to more
than 60,000 peer-reviewed online teaching and learning materials
across a wide range of disciplines.
FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal
Com.:YesLocal: Yes
According to the Assembly Appropriations Committee:
1)CCC. Annual General Fund (Prop 98) costs of up to $100,000
for campuses to identify and disclose in course schedules
those classes using free digital materials.
2)CSU. Annual General Fund cost of around $100,000.
3)UC. Minor and absorbable costs.
SUPPORT: (Verified8/19/16)
None received
OPPOSITION: (Verified8/19/16)
None received
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 76-0, 8/18/16
AYES: Achadjian, Alejo, Travis Allen, Arambula, Atkins, Baker,
Bigelow, Bloom, Bonilla, Bonta, Brough, Brown, Burke,
Calderon, Campos, Chang, Chau, Chávez, Chiu, Chu, Cooley,
SB 1359
Page 8
Cooper, Dahle, Daly, Dodd, Frazier, Beth Gaines, Gallagher,
Cristina Garcia, Eduardo Garcia, Gatto, Gipson, Gomez,
Gonzalez, Gordon, Gray, Grove, Hadley, Harper, Holden, Irwin,
Jones, Jones-Sawyer, Lackey, Levine, Linder, Lopez, Low,
Maienschein, Mathis, Mayes, McCarty, Medina, Melendez, Mullin,
Nazarian, Obernolte, O'Donnell, Olsen, Patterson, Quirk,
Ridley-Thomas, Rodriguez, Salas, Santiago, Steinorth, Mark
Stone, Thurmond, Ting, Wagner, Waldron, Weber, Wilk, Williams,
Wood, Rendon
NO VOTE RECORDED: Dababneh, Eggman, Roger Hernández, Kim
Prepared by:Lynn Lorber / ED. / (916) 651-4105
8/19/16 19:37:23
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