Open Textbooks have seen impressive growth and impact in the North American context, through providers and initiatives such as OpenStax, the Open Textbook Network, BC Campus, and Lumen Learning. With the exception of Siyavula in South Africa however, the open textbook model has largely been restricted to North America.
Whether this is a result of particular contextual dependencies (such as the relative cost of textbooks) or because this is where the funding and interest has been focused is as yet unknown. The aim of this project then is to test the transferability of this model to a new context, namely that of the UK.
Our overarching research question is:
What is the viability of introducing open textbooks in UK higher education through the testing of two proposed models: OpenStax and OpenTextbook Network approaches?
We have also identified several subquestions:
- How does the context differ?
- What are the methods for uptake that are transferable?
- What can be generalised for adoption elsewhere?
Just see this exciting initiative, and wanted to reach out and introduce ourselves, as I suspect we have a lot in common.
At Open Book Publishers we have just published our 100th OA book. All are rigorously peer-reviewed, most are research monographs or collected editions, some are textbooks specifically targeted at the UK A-level students: eg
https://www.openbookpublishers.com/section/66/1/classics-textbooks
https://www.openbookpublishers.com/section/56/1/mathematics
and, forthcoming soon
https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/639/ethics-for-a-level
We also have some usage stats for these.
Be good to think how we may be able to collaborate. Do let me know if you’re interested.
Best wishes
Rupert
Thanks Rupert – it was great to catch up by SKYPE this week and we look forward to more fruitful discussions and collaborative working. Don’t forget #OER18 – https://oer18.oerconf.org
You can add eCampus Ontario (https://openlibrary.ecampusontario.ca/) to that list too! eCampus Ontario is making great strides in bringing open texts to the largest higher ed market in Canada.
Thanks for the suggestion, Nick; that’s great! I’ve now added eCampus Ontario to the ‘Resources’ tab.
Best wishes, Beck
[…] UK Open Textbooks project is underway with the Open University, the University of the West of England, the Open Textbook […]
Using Open Access/Open Source Textbooks (aka Open Textbooks) is a global trend in Open Education. California State University’s Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning Online and Teaching (MERLOT) at http://merlot.org will provide you with several resources for finding, selecting, and creating Open Textbooks. Examples: http://teachingcommons.us ; https://textbooks.opensuny.org ; https://about.rebus.community ; and more.
Thanks – MERLOT is indeed another source of high quality OER.