Faculty Textbook Adoption Guide. Instructor textbook ordering. OCA

Faculty Textbook Adoption Guide

Open in new window: OCA portal

Winter 2025 Faculty Guide

Online Coure Adoptions (OCA) for Winter 2025 is now open, see below to view the full timeline.
 
All instructors and faculty coordinators who submit book adoptions can log into the OCA portal. The Book Buyers use this information to populate each semester with the required course materials for students. Please check your OCA dashboards for accuracy of course listings, and contact your respective buyer if additional courses need to be added or removed. Adoptions will continue to be added by course all courses can be found by your program. 
 
Each distinct edition of a textbook, including every physical and digital version, will have a unique ISBN. Please only submit the ISBNs of the items you require, or allow as alternatives. For example, you might list 1 required physical textbook, and 1 alternative digital etext. They may be the same edition, but the physical and digital will have unique ISBNs. 
 
If you are using an Open Education Resource (OER) please include a note about the item in your adoptions. We'd be happy to direct students to the resource, even if we do not sell it ourselves.
 
Book Buyer Information:
If you have any questions or concerns please contact your buyer:

Location: Fennell Campus C110 (College map)

Phone: 905-575-2071

E-mail: michelle.gayle@mohawkcollege.ca

Programs: Michelle buys for all Post Secondary and Apprenticeship programs offered at the Stoney Creek Campus, as well as the following Continuing Education areas:
C.E. COMMUNITY
C.E. CREATIVE
C.E. HEALTH
C.E. TECHNOLOGY

 

Location: Fennell Campus C110 (College map)

Phone: 905-575-2324

E-mail: melissa.mellor@mohawkcollege.ca

Programs: Melissa buys for all Post Secondary programs offered at the Fennell Campus

 
   I.A.H.S. book adoptions are facilitated by McMaster University. (Programs 110,407,715,717,728,729,746,758,769,796,607,993)
 
Timelines:
Winter 2025 Summer 2025 Fall 2025
 
14-Oct-24 10-Feb-25 TBD
OCA Opens.
  • 12 weeks before first class.
7-Nov-24 3-Mar-25 TBD
Last day for custom publication adoptions (print-on-demand titles, Mohawk-specific textbooks, etc). 
  • 8 weeks before first class.
5-Dec-24 4-Apr-25 TBD
OCA Deadline. 
  • 4 weeks before first class.
19-Dec-24 18-Apr-25 TBD
Semester published on shop.mohawkcollege.ca for students to start purchasing. 
  • 2 weeks before first class.
6-Jan-25 5-May-25 TBD
First day of classes.

 

Help & FAQs:

The Buying Cycle

We always try to open OCA 12 weeks before the first class, and 'close' it 4 weeks before. This allows the necessary time to purchase the required stock, and deal with unforeseen circumstances (edition changes, back-ordered, no longer in print, etc). We then aim to publish the semester on shop.mohawkcollege.ca 2 weeks before the first class, to allow students time to purchase their books in advance. This also allows us to optimize returns of unused stock back to the publishers.

Adoptions submitted after the closing date are typically not expected to arrive in time for the first day of classes.

Please see our Online Course Adoption Guide in .PDF format: 

OCA Guide .pdf

You log into OCA using the same Single Sign-on used for email, MyMohawk, etc. New faculty members can e-mail Melissa or Michelle to be added to the OCA system.

It's different in each academic area. It may be an individual instructor submitting for their individual course, or a program coordinator submitting for multiple courses within a program, or a combination. Regardless, the bookstore does not police who is responsible. We simply need someone to confirm which material is being used this semester for each course offering.

When we build each semester in our system, we have the ability to assign one Instructor and one Coordinator to each course. Anyone assigned to a course will then see it pre-populated in their OCA portal, making their list of adoptions easier. We generally copy-over the previous like-semester and assume nothing has changed unless otherwise notified of changes. You can work alongside your book buyer to flesh-out these assignments, and insure that new courses and faculty are accounted for.

 

See also: Custom Merchandise

Some classes require a particular calculator, notebook, safety equipment, or uniform. We can help with that.

Please contact our General Merchandise buyer, Donna Mahon, with your items and course code. These items can potentially be added to your course as a suggested purchase, alongside the textbook. Or they could be located in our generic Course Supplies section if they may be of interest to other students.

We will work alongside you to see if a digital option can be found through Campus eBookstore or VitalSource.

You might consider approaching Print Services about creating a custom coursepack, and you can also approach the library to use the Reserves Collection.

You can have your department purchase in-stock textbooks from the bookstore using a FOAPAL (Fund, Organization, Account, Program, Activity, and Location). You will need to secure approval, and the details of your particular FOAPAL, from your department.

If you are looking to discuss textbook contents, edition changes, or custom publications, please reach out to the publisher directly.

Publishers:

 

Everyone at the college wins when you adopt early and direct your students to purchase the materials through the campus stores. All of the ‘profit’ generated remains in the school; reinvested to the benefit of students, faculty, and the college as a whole.

You can choose to send students elsewhere (directly to the publisher, to Amazon, etc), but that revenue is now lost, revenue that helps to cover the cost of many campus supports and services. And now, instead of having a Mohawk College colleague to help you trouble-shoot and problem-solve issues, you have to rely on large-scale international corporations, 1-800 numbers, and chatbots.

Shop around. You'll see that our prices are very competitive, and often cheaper.

You can assist by supporting the use of your chosen materials to your students. Directly linking to shop.mohawkcollege.ca in your course outlines and on MyCanvas is a great way to do this. We can provide links to individual courses, or shelf locations within the bookstore. Anything to make it easier for students to find their books. We're here to help.

We strongly encourage the use of OCA, but in the event of a last-minute emergency you can use this Emergency Adoption E-mail tool.

The purpose of OCA is to track, semester by semester, the history of each course's adoptions in a way that easily imports into Bookware, the software used by the bookstore. Adoptions coming in by email create many difficulties in maintaining records. When an 'Emergency Adoption' is received, one of the buyers will be submitting the adoption into OCA on your behalf.