Navigating the World of Open Source College Textbooks
The rising cost of college textbooks has become a significant burden for students. Fortunately, the open educational resources (OER) movement offers a solution: open source textbooks. These free textbooks, written by knowledgeable scholars, are a relatively new phenomenon that is rapidly gaining traction. Open textbooks are funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. This article explores the landscape of open source college textbooks, providing resources and information to help students and educators find and utilize these valuable resources.
Understanding Open Textbooks
The Open Textbook movement focuses on the creation and use of books that are openly licensed. These textbooks are also openly licensed with a Creative Commons. Depending on the license, they may be legally displayed, uploaded, hosted, distributed, and modified without fee, permission, or conducting a fair use analysis. This flexibility makes open textbooks a cost-effective and adaptable alternative to traditional textbooks.
Key Repositories and Resources
Several organizations and initiatives are dedicated to providing access to open textbooks. Here are some of the most prominent:
The Open Textbook Library: This library is a collection of over 300 freely available electronic textbooks licensed under one of six Creative Commons licenses. Some books include faculty peer reviews, offering valuable insights into the quality and suitability of the material.
OpenStax: OpenStax is a place for instructors who simply want an open textbook that’s ready to go. It offers a growing collection of professional quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed, editable intro-level textbooks. All textbooks are licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY) and are freely available in PDF, HTML, ePub, and customizable via Connexions (cnx.org). iBook versions are also available for a small fee, and hardcover print versions can be purchased. Most OpenStax books include ancillary material such as solution manuals, test banks, and lecture slides. The quality of these texts is very good. They are authored by faculty and have been carefully edited and peer reviewed.
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LibreTexts: The LibreTexts project is a multi-institutional collaborative effort to improve education at all levels of higher learning by developing Open Access Resources. LibreTexts takes a different approach by integrating an editing and remixing interface with the content. Much OER content is already on the site and can be remixed into a custom text using their drag-and-drop interface. It also provides mathematics open textbooks, many of which are free to use.
MERLOT: MERLOT contains links to freely available online textbooks from a variety of sources. It is a curated collection of open educational resources.
OER Commons: OER Commons indexes a wide variety of openly licensed educational materials. OER Commons provides a single point of access to the highest quality content from around the world.
Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS): Developed at SUNY Geneseo, OASIS searches more than 155,000+ records from carefully selected sources.
Subject-Specific Resources
While the repositories listed above offer materials across various disciplines, some resources specialize in specific subject areas:
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Foreign Language Resources: The Department of Education supports resources for foreign language learning. The COERLL is one of 15 National Foreign Language Resource Centers funded by the US Department of Education.
Mathematics: Free, open source, online course management system for mathematics and other quantitative fields. MyOpenMath runs on the open source, IMathAS platform, providing free hosted use of this platform in support of free, open textbooks like the ones listed on OpenTextBookStore.com. An excellent and low priced alternative to online math homework systems.
Nursing: The Open RN project is led by Chippewa Valley Technical College as part of the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) consortium. OER nursing textbooks and virtual simulations are collaboratively developed by faculty based on the WTCS State Nursing curriculum and the current NCLEX-RN Test Plan. Nursing textbooks developed as part of the ONE Project, a collaboration between the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and OpenStax at Rice University.
Biology: Online resource portal for biology education in ecology, plant biology and evolution. This project is a partnership of the Ecological Society of America, the Botanical Society of America and the Society for the Study of Evolution, collectively, the Life Discovery Partners.
Business, Economics, Math, & Statistics: Open Textbooks in Business, Economics, Math, & Statistics. Textbooks and supplements are accessible at no cost.
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Finding and Evaluating Open Textbooks
With so many resources available, finding the right open textbook can seem daunting. Here are some tips:
Use search tools: Utilize all-in-one search tools for finding OER, such as those provided by OER Commons and the Open Education Consortium in collaboration with MERLOT.
Browse repositories: Explore the Open Textbook Library, OpenStax, and LibreTexts to see what textbooks are available in your subject area.
Check for peer reviews: Look for textbooks that have been peer-reviewed by faculty to ensure quality.
Consider the license: Pay attention to the Creative Commons license to understand how you can use, adapt, and share the textbook.
Explore ancillary materials: See if the textbook comes with supplementary materials like solution manuals, test banks, and lecture slides.
The Benefits of Open Textbooks
Open textbooks offer numerous advantages for students and educators:
Cost savings: Open textbooks are free to use online, saving students significant money on textbook costs.
Accessibility: Open textbooks are often available in multiple formats, including PDF, HTML, and ePub, making them accessible on various devices.
Adaptability: Depending on the license, open textbooks can be modified and adapted to fit the specific needs of a course.
Quality: Many open textbooks are written by experienced faculty and have been peer-reviewed to ensure quality.
Additional Resources
Beyond the repositories and search tools mentioned above, several other resources can aid in finding and utilizing open textbooks:
BC Campus: British Columbia has been doing a lot of innovative things with open textbooks. BC Campus has a growing collection of Career and Technical materials. Search a topic or click "Browse", "Find open textbooks".
AMSER: AMSER is a portal of educational resources and services built specifically for use by those in Community and Technical Colleges but free for anyone to use.
TAACCCT Grant Recipient Colleges: A growing repository of materials developed by Federal TAACCCT Grant recipient colleges. Some great resources here!
Internet Archive: Nearly 48,000 digitized books as of 2015. All in the public domain (in general, published before 1923). Available in epub, kindle, PDF or to be read online. Over 50 languages.
HathiTrust Digital Library: Nearly 2,500 books as of January 2015. Includes search and browse finding features.
PubMed Central: National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health.
The Smithsonian Open Access: More than 4.5 million images from across Smithsonian's 21 museums, 9 research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo. All images licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.
Overcoming Challenges
While the open textbook movement has made significant strides, some challenges remain:
Awareness: Many students and educators are still unaware of the availability of open textbooks.
Finding the right textbook: With so many resources available, finding the right textbook can be time-consuming.
Quality concerns: Some educators may be hesitant to adopt open textbooks due to concerns about quality.
Lack of ancillary materials: Not all open textbooks come with ancillary materials like solution manuals and test banks.
The Future of Open Textbooks
The open textbook movement is poised to continue growing as more educators and students recognize the benefits of these resources. As more open textbooks become available and awareness increases, the cost of education will become more affordable and accessible for all. The Department of Education is actively supporting this movement.
Open Educational Resources (OER)
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are either in the public domain or licensed in a way that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities:
- Retain - the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
- Reuse - the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
- Revise - the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
- Remix - the right to combine the original and/or revised content with other existing content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
- Redistribute - the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)
Creative Commons Licenses
Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators. These licenses allow creators to grant specific permissions for others to use their work while retaining certain rights. Understanding the different types of Creative Commons licenses is essential for both users and creators of open educational resources.
The most common types of Creative Commons licenses include:
CC BY (Attribution): This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.
CC BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike): This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to "copyleft" free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.
CC BY-ND (Attribution-NoDerivatives): This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial): This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike): This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives): This license is the most restrictive of the six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
Finding Images and Multimedia
In addition to textbooks, open educational resources also include images, videos, and other multimedia materials. These resources can enhance the learning experience and provide valuable visual aids. Here are some sources for finding open-licensed images and multimedia:
