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If so, then you might want to think about selecting an Open Textbook for your students.
Don't know what Open Textbooks are?
Open Textbooks are alternatives to the expensive textbooks that come from traditional commercial publishers.
They are 'open educational resources' or OERs.
But, are these free resources as effective or of the same quality as textbooks?
The research says yes. Check out the video and links at the bottom of the first page of the tabbed box for scholarly articles and reviews of Open Textbooks.
If you're interested to know more, the tabbed boxes below may answer your preliminary questions before going on to the rest of the guide.
As a teacher you are concerned with providing your students with a good quality textbook.
With many potential purchases we would like to ‘try-before-buy’, and one of the most useful things about Open Textbooks is that you can look them over in detail before deciding.
This Open Textbook, “Australian Politics and Policy” is an example of:
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Cover image of Australian Politics and Policy from the Sydney University Press |
'This video summarises the available research synthesised in Hilton, J. (2016) Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions'.
Video 4:40
Globally there are more than a dozen websites that offer Open Textbooks.
These sites may or may not include the many universities across the world with their own open publishing press.
Check the Adopting Open Textbooks page of this guide for a list of Open Textbooks by discipline for list of Open Educational Resource publishers for that area.
Any teaching resource, whether from a 'traditional publisher' or an Open Textbook, should be evaluated prior to selection and textbooks, traditional or Open, are no different.
Individual teachers may have their own method of evaluating a textbook, and should use that method with the following additional considerations.
If you don’t have a set method for evaluating a textbook, refer to the page on this guide on Adopting Open Textbooks for a set of criteria for Evaluating Open Textbooks.
If you select an Open Textbook as your set text, it could be used in any way traditional textbooks are used.
Many of the Creative Commons licences assigned to Open Textbooks are permissive, and will allow editing and additions to the Open Textbook such as:
If you are time-poor and not yet ready to create an Open Textbook they can be:
Make sure you add any Open Textbooks to Learning Resources to monitor student usage and link maintenance