Using Publisher Content

The Conundrum of Publisher Content

Faculty across the state are caught between a rock and a hard place. On one side, we have a desire to build rich courses that offer students engaging resources. But developing resources are accessible takes time, skills, and money that we may not have. 

Publishers offer some really slick digital games, professional graphics, and some excellent videos that we simply can't produce ourselves. Some of this content, however, is not accessible. Though publishers are urged to do an accessibility analysis on their resources, including textbooks and peripheral support material, they are not bound by law to create accessible material. WE ARE. 

Do you know the saying, "Buyer beware?" Before we incorporate publisher material into our courses, it is our responsibility to rigorously test that material to ensure it's accessible. As a system, so far, we're failing quite badly at holding publishers accountable, and that leads to a series of unfortunate results. Here's the short list:

  • Students with disabilities are being locked out of course materials they need to succeed—materials they paid for.
  • Faculty are being required to remediate publisher material, which means hundreds of faculty are individually "fixing" similar documents, but the source material is never getting fixed.
  • Publishers continue to sell inaccessible material and, as long as we keep making our students use it, the publishers have no financial incentive to change. 

Publisher Content in Course Review

Publisher content, in and of itself, is not verboten in courses aligned with the OEI Rubric. That said, courses that rely solely or heavily on publisher-created content often don’t demonstrate all of the rubric elements (as an example, B4: Student-Initiated Contact or C7: Feedback Guidelines may not be present) which would prevent a course from being aligned. Additionally, the instructor would need to ensure reviewers have access to their publisher account in order to assess aspects of the rubric that may be demonstrated in the publisher platform (assignment instructions, for example).

On top of that, it’s been our experience that much publisher content has issues with accessibility—even when the publisher says it’s accessible. (Some of the houses are getting better but they’re definitely lagging in that department.) This is why the CVC strongly encourages colleges to be sure vendor materials meet prevailing accessibility guidelines before procuring them. 

There are courses using publisher content that have been aligned with the CVC Course Design Rubric and awarded the Quality Reviewed badge. It really depends on what content is being used and how an instructor incorporates that content into their existing course design but, if the course is not significantly more than just publisher materials, it’s probably not a good candidate for review.