7 Things You Should Know About Open Textbook Publishing – EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI)

With the ever rising cost of education, the textbook price is also rising. The open educational resources model has surfaced as a response to this problem and to meet the increasing demand of high-quality learning materials. Open textbooks can be offered by commercial publishers or found in open repositories. Open resources can promote active learning through student interaction with the text, particularly when they contribute to authorship. Although open textbooks face questions about the accuracy and reliability of their content, they allow higher education instructors to design content for their courses on an as-needed basis, choosing from an array of books, articles, videos, audio recordings, and readings. This EDUCAUSE resource provides concise information about OERs.

The 7 Things You Should Know About… series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.

7 Things You Should Know About Open Textbook Publishing

Keywords: open resources, Open Education Resources (OER), ELI