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Open Textbooks
OER Commons Visit the redesigned OER Commons website! Learn about the conditions of use labels and about content licensing options. Register to contribute your reviews and resources to the site. Forgot your password? Featured Open Textbooks |
Welcome! It’s 2009, and we are excited as ever to be a participant in the global Open Education movement. Our passion for conducting research in the open education field and in creating new networks for teaching and learning through OER Commons is rooted in the idea that equitable access to high-quality education is a right for all. We are particularly excited by the recent explosion of open textbook initiatives, and also, on a personal front, in the redesign of the OER Commons website. Take a look! We’ve made many changes throughout, and also added new user-friendly labels to help navigate the array of conditions of use for all of the resources on our site. Open Textbooks: Exploring New Models and Formats The open textbook is an emerging phenomenon. Appearing in various digital formats and methods of distribution, these resources are aiming to challenge assumptions and restrictions around the traditional textbook. View this list of Open Textbooks. We’ve created a new category within OER Commons to make textbooks easier to find and evaluate for your own needs. You will find textbooks on subjects ranging from calculus to Chinese, from eMarketing to history and physics. What defines an Open Textbook?
The goals driving open textbooks are chiefly about solving problems around access, high cost, shortages, and outdated static content. The hope is to significantly alleviate the costs that are real barriers for students to attend college and for school districts and colleges to function, particularly now with vastly reduced budgets. Collaborative Statistics is an example of an open textbook that is helping to alleviate these costs. Used in many community colleges, it is a 632-page textbook that is free to use, share, remix, and download. A printed copy of the entire book costs less than $32. In addition, Open Textbooks are about providing the capacity to better meet local teaching and learning needs. They might more easily meet accessibility requirements for students with disabilities. They offer students convenience and choice to learn using multiple modes and formats. Open Textbooks offer freedom to instructors to customize content to fit their instructional purposes, or to collaborate with other instructors. The intentions around flexibility, personalization, creativity, and participation in teaching and learning generally are integral to the vision behind OER. How Do You Make Your Textbook Decision? What is the process you currently go through to choose a textbook for your class or your college course? What might motivate you to use an open textbook? What do you need to know about the provider, the mode of delivery, the license – how can it be shared, reused, and distributed? We want to gain a better understanding of what instructors and learners need to know about using and modifying open textbooks, such as how a textbook’s components might be, technically or legally, and how interoperable they are with other works. New economic and learning models are evolving around this emerging movement and would benefit from your contributions.
More Links About Open Textbooks
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The definition of an open textbook is still being shaped. Generally, an open textbook has a license allowing it to be used, shared, and printed without a charge to the user. Covering a wide range of disciplines, open textbooks can be available to download and print in various file formats from the content provider or an OER repository. Licenses or other terms specify whether content may be shared or modified. Open textbooks can range from public domain books to new textbooks create specifically as OER. Open textbooks can range from public domain books to existing textbooks to new textbooks created specifically as OER. Offered for free online, they can also include easy ways to print low-cost and customizable sections or entire copies of the book.