International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 118

International Journal of Open Educational Resources
panies may seem like it has the ability
to save students money, the fact of the
matter is that digital books come with
digital “locks,” effectively preventing
students from printing, downloading,
or annotating the material (McGreal,
2017, p. 295).
Looking at Brandle et al.’s (2019)
statistic of 353 students wanting to annotate
their readings, we asked how
many of our own students were aware
that annotations could be made within
some e-readers. Nearly one-third
(32.7%) said that they were not aware;
this provides faculty with an opportunity
to increase students’ technological
skills and make better use of digital
texts.
Figure 4. Ability to annotate.
Another of Brandle et al.
(2019)’s statistics is worth keeping in
mind at our rural institution: 44 CUNY
students reported limited or no access
to tech devices or the Internet (p. 92);
how many of our affiliates would answer
the same way? This is a question
we intend to include in future outreach,
although shame may downplay the results
to some extent. We need to ensure
that inexpensive print options are not
only available, but also clearly explicated,
either in the course catalog or in the
syllabus on the first day of class. This offers
librarians the opportunity to work
more closely with the campus bookstore
(Follet-based) to look into print-on-
demand options for Open Educational
Resources. Jhangiani (2017a) called the
inaccurate assumption that all students
have equal access to digital resources
“digital redlining,” which is an insidious
aspect of information privilege.
Reinforcing this concern are the
results of our next question: When it
comes to digital content, how important
is it to you to be able to download
content and save it for use when you're
not connected to the network (offline
availability)? A total of 9.5% (14 students)
answered not important or only a
little important; 17.6% answered neither
important nor unimportant, while 73%
(116) ranked it as important or very
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