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Faculty often have many questions about open educational . I've collected a resources (OER) and open textbooks. A few of the most common are located here on this page. Where appropriate, I've provided there are resources to support the response. If there is a question you have encountered that hasn't been included here, please comment below!
Quality
Question: They can't be that good if they're free, rightWhat is the quality like for open textbooks?
Only you can tell if a book is of quality, whether it is openly licensed or commercial. Textbooks in the Open Textbook Library have been reviewed by faculty for your reference.
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Most authors of open textbooks were paid using grants or incentive programs. Others opted to write an open textbook for increased exposure for their work and impact, as a part of scholarship of teaching and learning, and as a service to their field.
Question: Is the quality the same as commercial textbooks?
There is are a growing number of studies that show that students have the same or better learning outcomes when using open textbooks. Faculty Faculty members perceived their students as equally prepared for their course using open textbooks compared to using traditional textbooks (Hilton et al., 2013). A A significant portion of faculty members (23%) believed their students performed better when using open textbooks, while a majority (64%) thought that their students showed the same level of performance (Jung et al., 2017; Hilton et al., 2013).
Implementation
Question: How How do I find the time to adopt an open textbook?
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Yes, students can print OER on demand. Efforts are underway to create a centralized printing solution for students. Until then, you can refer students to an online printing service like PrintMe1. Students can upload the PDF file or chapters to the site and receive a print copy in the mail.
Question: How How can I edit them?
eCampus Center is piloting the use of Pressbooks - a WordPress based authoring platform. Pressbooks enables you to compose or edit your book in one place and create multiple file types automatically (EPUB, digital and print PDF, MOBI, and online). Please refer faculty to me for help getting an OER Pressbook set up.
Alternatively, faculty can download and edit the content using whatever software they would like, depending upon the file types available.
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Question: Won't this hurt our campus bookstore?
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