My last presentation on open textbooks for Green River College:
Some Background Information on OERs
- Background and Action Paper on OER by West & Victor. This is a comprehensive over-view with information relevant to instructors and administrators.
- Open Educational Resources: A Definition by Stephen Downes
- JISC’s What Are Open Education Resources?
- A Basic Guide to Open Education Resources by Kanwar & Uvalic´-Trumbic´
- Open Education Resources 1.0 for Educators by Seth Gurell
- Open Resource Training 101 by Bridget McCrea – Discusses some of the issues around OER and faculty support. I was interviewed for this article.
OER and Open Textbook Hubs
Open Washington – A well-organized and comprehensive resource for finding open textbooks and OERs.
Open Textbook Collections
- Community College Open Textbook Collaborative – I liked the amount of finished work represented by this project and the fact that they have English textbooks.
- Connexions – This is a site that features reusable modules and learning objects as well as some texts.
- OER Commons – There are a lot of textbooks here that will be of interest to us. Under recommended resources click on “textbooks.”
- Open SUNY – State University of New York’s open textbook initiative. Visit this site not only to find textbooks but to look at a sustainable model.
- Saylor Foundation – This is the collection of open textbooks that were once freely available to students via Flatworld Knowledge who removed free access to these high quality openly licensed books.
- Textbook Revolution – gathering place for books and reviews.
- Exemplary Collection of Open eLearning Content Repositories
- MERLOTx: This site was created by the California State University system to help instructors find open textbooks and OER.
Commercial Options?
Commercial options seem to be of a “bait and switch” variety: get the students using the free versions and then charge for them later in the name of “sustainability.” Rather than relying on commercial textbook companies, we would rather see academic communities share resources to create, vette, and review open textbooks.
Project Sites for OER and Open Textbooks
- Saylor Foundation – Complete courses using Creative Commons licensed materials, public domain, and original materials.
- Sophia Open Content Initiative – This is from De Anza and a good example of a grant-driven project in California.
- Open Courseware Consortium – This is a very useful portal to the international OER community.
- Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources – This project site has a lot of useful links.
- Open Education Resources Center for California – This is a good site for more information and resources in California.
- Community College Open Textbook Collaborative – a collection of colleges, agencies, and educational non-profits supporting open textbooks.
- Curriki – “Curriki’s mission is to provide free, high-quality curricula and education resources to teachers, students and parents around the world.”
Some Example Open Textbooks at College of the Redwoods
The model at College of the Redwoods math department has faculty working together to create textbooks for the department.
Open Research Organizations
Open Research Journals, Repostories, and Search Tools
- Journals
- The Directory of Open Access Journals lists more than 2,800 journals that provide free access to the full text of their articles. You can search for a specific journal or browse by subject area.
- The SPARC Publisher Partner Program features non-profit organizations that are pursuing innovative business models to provide affordable, if not open access, to peer-reviewed research.
- Search tools
- OAIster is a tool to search archives compliant with the Open Archives Initiative metadata standard. This can include open-access journals, institutional and subject repositories, as well as other digital archives, which may include educational or historical content in addition to scholarly journal articles.http://www.oaister.org/
- The Directory of Open Access Journals also includes a tool to search the content of some journals listed. http://www.doaj.org/