The UK Open Textbooks project was conducted in several stages over the period of March 2017 to May 2019. The project tested two highly successful approaches to increasing engagement with, and use of, open textbooks. We are pleased to announce that our report into the readiness of the UK for open textbooks is now available!… Read more
We are delighted to have an article published by Insights Magazine on ‘open textbooks – an untapped opportunity for universities, colleges and schools‘. In the article Beck and Viv summarise some of the project activities to date, and make some recommendations for further work and policy changes needed within the school and university sector. You can… Read more
The New Year saw Rob and I head to ASE 2018 at The University of Liverpool to showcase OpenStax STEM textbooks to science educators. A massive thanks to the dozens of participants who stopped by to talk to us during the event, both to find out more about open textbooks and OpenStax but also talk about… Read more
For the penultimate open textbook workshop of 2017 I had the privilege of spending time with fantastic University of Sunderland colleagues to discuss how we can help increase access and participation in education through the use of openly licensed resources. This blog post summarises our discussion. The workshop was organised by Andy Fraser, Senior Lecturer, who is… Read more
Last week the UK Open Textbook project workshop series headed south to London. Two sessions were conducted in buildings off Russell Square in the heart of the capital. The workshops were attended by a range of librarians, learning technologists and subject specialists representing London Metropolitan University, The University of London, University College London, The… Read more
Viv and I headed up to Stoke-on-Trent recently to conduct two open textbook workshops with staff from Staffordshire University. We had a great mix of participants from librarians, senior lecturers to senior management, with fantastic discussions on all aspects of openness and the potential of open textbooks. Some key points from both workshops: In general,… Read more
Yesterday I attended my first open textbook workshop with practitioners from outside the project at a workshop led by Viv Rolfe at the University of Sussex. We met in the Employability and Careers Centre in the Library, and the session was attended by academics, subject support specialists, librarians and subject specialist librarians, technologists, specialists… Read more
Over the course of three weeks during late August and early September we had the pleasure of Dani Nicolson and Daniel Williamson of project collaborators OpenStax (US based providers of more than 20 open textbooks in high enrolment subjects) visiting the UK as part of their month-long #EurOpenStax tour. Their visit kicked off with several days in… Read more
One of the key stages in planning research in higher education is ensuring that what you want to do has received ethical approval from your research institution. Typically, any research involving human participants will be assessed for the potential harm it could cause, or any rights it could potentially violate. Our project is evaluating the… Read more
The first of our project workshops on open textbooks was held at the University of the West of England, Bristol, on 20 and 21st July 2017. Previous posts contain links to slides and other discussions. This post captures some of the ideas around the potential of the open textbook publishing model, and in the discussions we… Read more
