College education, including tuition and textbook costs, is simply too expensive. That is why Elizabeth D. Kirby, an associate professor at Ohio State University, and Christine Charvet, an assistant professor at the Auburn College of Veterinary Medicine, are working to make learning neuroscience accessible for all students with the creation of an open access textbook, Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience. Learn more about the process of creating this new textbook and how to implement it into your own curriculum.
What is the open access textbook, and why should people adopt it?
Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience is a primarily online textbook covering the basic topics typical of college entry-level behavioral neuroscience, as well as some newer ones that have historically received less attention. The book and all its ancillary resources, like test banks and lecture slides, were made possible by federal funding from the National Science Foundation.
There are two primary reasons we recommend that faculty consider adopting this book (or pieces of it) for their courses.
The first reason to use this resource is simple: it's free. The cost of textbooks can be a significant barrier to success for students. By using free resources, also referred to as Open Education Resources (OERs), we as instructors can help reduce that barrier. Anyone in the world with an internet connection can freely access Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience at the publisher’s website, Openstax.org.
The second major reason to use this book is its breadth of high-quality neuroscience content. The material starts with basic cellular and structural anatomy of the nervous system and goes through the high-level functions of the brain such as memory and executive function. The chapters were written by faculty with expertise in their chapter area, as well as significant teaching experience. By involving a broad range of faculty across specialties, the book aims to present chapters that are state-of-the-art, connected to the forefront of the field. To keep up to date, we also plan a major revision every five years.
Creation and use of this open educational resource – Elizabeth D. Kirby
The creation of this OER originated with my own frustrations as an instructor of an introduction to behavioral neuroscience course. Textbooks were useful resources for many of my students, but I did not like forcing them to spend money on a book that they were unlikely to use again. Through conversations with an NSF program officer, Evan Balaban, my frustration turned into an Early Concept Grant for Exploratory Research award in 2020 that funded the creation of this openly accessible textbook.
My co-editors, Melissa Glenn (Colby College), Noah Sandstrom (Williams College) and Christina Williams (Duke University), and I were now starting a new textbook from scratch, which allowed us to rethink a number of standard ways of doing things.
Cutting-edge content. Our desire for cutting-edge content meant recruiting different authors for each chapter. Having such a wide array of authors, however, meant we needed to provide central structure to make the textbook cohesive. One way we did this was by generating all the illustrations centrally. Partnering with Openstax as publisher was also key. They provided a structure that gave the content a unified feeling.
Involving students. Undergraduates helped generate over 500 images for the textbook, conduct video author interviews, and reviewed chapters to make sure they resonated with our target audience. Graduate and postdoctoral trainees also contributed methods videos showing common neuroscience techniques, like immunohistochemistry or fMRI, in action. In the future, we plan to continue student involvement through events like neuroscience art contests.- Modern topic focus. We dedicated new chapters to some topics that have been relegated to boxes or subsections in the past. For example, neuroimmunology has its own chapter, contributed by field-leading expert Staci Bilbo. Christine Charvet (my co-author of this article) contributed a chapter on comparative neuroscience, emphasizing the need for both basic and biomedical bioscience research across species.
I use this textbook almost in its entirety now in my own introduction to behavioral neuroscience courses. My course largely follows the structure and chapter order of the book, including using the premade lecture slides. My goal is to make content from class and content from the text stitch together easily for students. But this is just one way to use this resource, as Dr. Charvet shows a different way.
An alternative perspective on potential uses of the open access textbook – Christine Charvet
I was very enthusiastic to learn about Dr. Kirby’s NSF-funded project to create a freely accessible textbook in behavioral neuroscience. I had been teaching behavioral neuroscience for several years, and I felt increasingly uncomfortable asking students to spend $100 or more on a textbook. At the time, the semester predictably began with students explaining the difficulty affording textbooks, so I was excited to participate in alleviating the financial burden of students.
I wrote a chapter on comparative neuroscience, which is an essential topic for behavioral neuroscience. Thinking about the evolution of behavioral traits and adaptations is interesting, and it is also an important topic for biomedical scientists. We need to translate our findings from model systems to humans. I am enthusiastic that the textbook integrates diverse perspectives.
The material is very adaptable for students’ learning at different levels. I teach neuroscience to graduate veterinary students as part of the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) curriculum at Auburn University. I enjoy using some of the Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience resources for graduate students in combination with other resources for lectures. It’s easy to use and students can easily reach out for additional details online. I foresee Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience being useful for student learning at many different levels, including graduate and professional level courses in neurosciences and medical fields, as well as high school curriculum. What I really enjoy about Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience is that it is accessible for anyone interested in learning about neuroscience, at no cost.
About the Contributors
