DailyDirt: Open Textbooks Starting To Save Students Real Money

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Jan 20th 2016 5:00pm — Michael Ho

One aspect of the open educational resources movement (OER) is open textbooks that are free to use -- content in the public domain or with copyright terms that require only attribution (or attribution and share-alike clauses). Open textbooks have taken some time to get written, reviewed and adopted -- but now that there are hundreds of these books available, students should be able to use them freely and benefit from (and even contribute to) these educational materials.

One estimate reports that college students can save about $128 per course by using open textbooks. That's just a few hundred bucks that pales in comparison to tuition these days, but it could be a significant dent in the publishing industry if every class used open textbooks. [url]
OpenStax college books claims to have saved students $39 million in the 2015-16 academic year. OpenStax says that 1 in 5 US colleges are using its textbooks. Launched in 2012, OpenStax is on target for its goal of publishing textbooks for the 25 most-attended college courses and saving students $500 million by 2020. [url]
Several states have endorsed open textbook projects. Besides OpenStax, Minnesota has an open textbook library, and California is trying to cut its $400 million costs on K-12 textbooks (someday). [url]

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Filed Under: education, oer, open educational resources, open textbook, openstax, textbooks

7 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2016 @ 8:01pm

No mention of MIT opencourseware?
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Steve, 20 Jan 2016 @ 11:20pm

Open textbooks
I can see why this might be a problem for a lot of profs who require you to buy their dead-tree book to take their course. Instant cash cow!
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Jan 2016 @ 6:37am

Re: Open textbooks
Reminds me of the opposite - a professor who openly admitted that he didn't care about pirating his textbook because he got about a nickel a book.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Jan 2016 @ 10:16am

Wait for it...!
The established publishers will soon attack our senses with their tear-inducing tales of destitution from loss of profits and the sheer unpatriotic communist idea of sharing what should be owned.
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Irene Fenswick (profile), 20 Jul 2016 @ 11:22am

Open textbooks
Completely agree with statements in the article!

Also, I would like to share my recently published free online textbook library. It consists of hundreds of textbooks on more than 24 various academic disciplines.

Enjoy it: http://smart.study/blog/1000-open-textbooks-and-learning-resources-for-all-subjects/
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Jonathan, 5 Sep 2017 @ 7:23pm

Not just immoral but pointless as well. Your professors or teachers give you assignment as an opportunity to do an actual research and learn something new and as a consequence understand the subject better and earn more money.Instead you spend money with zero in return for yourself.
Reconsider the atual economic ration in it. Since everything we do in life is tied up to finances. But if you are really looking for a good service http://essaytools.com/ here we go.
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John Reddick, 16 Dec 2019 @ 5:46am

One aspect of the open educational resources movement (OER) is open textbooks that are free to use -- content in the public domain or with copyright terms that require only attribution (or attribution and share-alike clauses) - Completely agree!
Also, you can read free research papers, essays or case studies at https://freeessays.page/
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