Open Textbook
Open textbooks are collections of open educational resources organized in a manner that looks like a traditional textbook. (Or, if you prefer, open textbooks are textbooks that use a Creative Commons license.) While this organizational scheme may not seem particularly innovative, faculty and teachers know how to use textbooks to support their teaching. Consequently, open textbooks appear to be having a broader and more practical impact on formal education than either OpenCourseWare or stand-alone open educational resources have to date.
As you recall from Week 2 when you read "Open Textbooks: The Billion Dollar Solution" by Student PIRGs , students are paying approximately $1300 for textbook and supplies each year and the textbook prices have been rising more than three times the rate of inflation for the past two decades. Publishing companies have been raking in huge profits, engaging in practices that drive costs up, whether it be issuing new editions so used books don't have a market or bundling textbooks with unnecessary CDs and/or pass-codes for online materials. They get away with it because students have no choice. The good news is that in addition to some of the short-term cost savings ideas identified in the article, long-term solutions such as the open-source textbooks are gaining traction, which could revolutionize the existing textbook market.
These open textbooks offer free online access and print copies at affordable prices. So, how do you get started finding one?
1. Go to Open Washington [New Window]. Under Find OER, you will see four media categories. Textbook is the fourth.
3. We will explore one of these sites. Click OpenStax College. There is a brief list of features of this resource. Click on OpenStax College.
4. On the OpenStax College banner image (this will change), click Explore All Subjects.
5. Browse the books.
6. Choose a subject. For this example, we will select Biology.
7. This particular textbook has several different ways to access it. It can be viewed online. It can be downloaded as a PDF then uploaded into Laulima. A print copy (cost $52) can be ordered. It can be downloaded as an iBook (cost $4.99) to an iPad.
8. Make sure to always check the license information. You will learn what the licenses mean in Week 5. For now, just verify it has a Creative Commons license.
Open Stax offers additional learning resources such as online homework tools similar to the publisher's online tools or simulation sites. The student access cost is about $25.
Try other repositories we’ve listed as well. You may find another repository that serves your needs better.
You may not have found a textbook that meets your needs or you may want to enhance what is already there. We will search through Open Course Materials to continue to build your course.
The content of this page includes:
Original content from "Finding OER" by David Wiley is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Original content from "How to Use Open Educational Resources (OER)" by Boyoung Chae and Christie Fierro,SBCTC is licensed under CC BY 4.0