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Open Textbooks For Teaching

How to find, adapt, or author open licenced textbooks for use in teaching

About Open Textbooks

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

Open Textbooks - the what, the why and the how

Open Textbooks are academic and educational texts published under Creative Commons open licencing. The licensing permissions allow for the 5R’s :
  • Reuse
  • Revise
  • Remix
  • Retain
  • Redistribute
Teaching staff can freely adapt, update, and add interactivity to the text of others, or to author their own text and publish for others to use. Open Textbooks are no cost to access and are available freely online.

The 5Rs of Open Educational Resources

Open Textbooks align with the University’s Living Values of Inclusion, Innovation, Excellence, Empowerment and Collaboration .
Equity and access to education are key social justice drivers to which the University is committed.

The image below indicates the work hours required at the minimum award wage (as at March 2022) for a student to afford 3 textbooks for the University's most popular courses, as well as hardship and barriers presented for some by some textbook costs.


 

Setting an open text for your unit champions inclusive practices to ensure equity, access and equal opportunity through:
  • equity of cost - freely accessible at no cost to students
  • equity of access – instant, portable, and ongoing access
Example: Swap an expensive text to an open text which ensures cost is no barrier for the students in your unit
Imagine if you could design and embed H5P into your prescribed text?
Adapting an Open Textbook allows the flexibility to explore pedagogic innovation with academic freedoms not possible with traditional ‘all rights reserved’ publishing. You can freely adapt or build upon an open text to reflect the local relevance and diversity of your students and add engaging learner tools embedded within the text.

Example : Find an open text for your subject and add content which:
  • speaks directly to your students’ experiences and reflects their diversity
  • acknowledges Indigenous heritage, perspectives and knowledge
  • is inclusive and engaging by using modified language or relevant examples and local statistics
  • add engaging multimedia and learning tools, quizzes.

Authoring an Open Textbook shares your expertise with the world, where you can build upon the work of others or publish your own work from scratch, collaborate with a colleague, and share your innovation.

Find out about the Open Textbook/ OER publishing workflow for authoring your own Open Textbook here.

Federation University Strategic Plan & Living Values

image of university's living values

 

Open Textbooks align with the University’s Living Values of Inclusion, Innovation, Excellence, Empowerment, and Collaboration.

Equity and access to education are key social justice drivers to which the University is committed.

Federation University Library supports the adoption of Open Textbooks for teaching:

  • to reduce costs and access barriers to students
  • to provide potential for pedagogic innovation for teaching staff
  • to share excellence and build collaboration.

The value offered by the use and adoption of Open Textbooks aligns with the University's Strategic Plan. Following are excerpts from the Strategic  plan where Open Textbooks may enhance the following goals.

  • Transform lives
    • World-class multi-sector education available to all
    • Positive career and life impact
    • Broad access, diversity and inclusion, acknowledging our Indigenous heritage
  • A strong and sustainable University
    • High quality, relevant and profitable educational offerings
    • First choice employer and destination for students in each of our communities
    • A focus on sustainability
  • Relentless innovation and reinvention
    • A world with continuous innovation and reinvention will drive how Australians work, live and learn.
  • Technology in education
    • The impact of technology on pedagogy has transformed how universities operate and students learn. We must use technology to drive high quality and connected experiences for our customers.
  • Lifelong learning
    • The way in which our customers access skills is increasingly focused on a continual skills acquisition approach, requiring us to offer new ways of learning, more often and more quickly.
  • Understand and support learner diversity
    • Provide a suite of educational opportunities and programs that embrace diversity, and which reflect an increasingly divergent customer base, through the use of effective market intelligence, engagement, monitoring and improvement.
  • Digital-first approach
    • Digital technology embedded in all we do, to deliver a high-quality and personalised experience at scale for students, staff and partners, as well as to reduce duplication.

UN Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

The Library sees the use of Open Textbooks as a way for the University to contribute to the SDGs, particularly Goal 4.

  • Goal 4: Quality Education
    Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all Goal 1: No Poverty?

The use of Open Textbooks may also contribute to the following SDGs

 

image of UN Sustainable Goals

Image of The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, 2018, from WikiMedia Commons.

Australian Human Rights Commission

Below are selected excerpts that would be supported by the use of Open Textbooks

Right to Education
  • ICESCR Article 13
    • (c) Higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education;
  • CEDAW Article 10
    • (c) The elimination of any stereotyped concept of the roles of men and women at all levels and in all forms of education by encouraging coeducation and other types of education which will help to achieve this aim and, in particular, by the revision of textbooks and school programmes and the adaptation of teaching methods;
  • The Covention on the Rights of the Child
    • Article 28: (c) Make higher education accessible to all on the basis of capacity by every appropriate means;
    • Article 29: c) The development of respect for the child's parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate, and for civilizations different from his or her own;
  • CRPD Article 24
    • b. The development by persons with disabilities of their personality, talents and creativity, as well as their mental and physical abilities, to their fullest potential;
    • b. Persons with disabilities can access an inclusive, quality and free primary education and secondary education on an equal basis with others in the communities in which they live;
Licence type Copying & sharing Editing/ adapting text Embedding H5P content in book Access Cost Peer reviewed Funded by Copyright ownership Author accreditation

(C)

All rights reserved

 NO, unless permission, licence NO, unless permission, licence NO, unless permission, licence If online, Digital Rights Management restricted (user numbers, downloads restricted) $60 upwards

Often.

Check.

 Publishing company and sales Usually publisher Variable - check each

CC

(All licence types except ND)

 YES, with attribution YES, with attribution YES Open Free

Often.

Check.

 University consortia, grants, funding. Original author licences out rights. Variable - check each

CC

BY-NC-ND

 YES, with attribution NO YES Open Free

Often.

Check.

 University consortia, grants, funding. Original author licences out rights. Variable - check each

Open textbooks are made available under Creative Commons licences that enable creators to maintain copyright in their work while allowing others to copy, adapt and distribute it freely, or with very few restrictions. 

There are six standard Creative Commons licences, listed below in order from most open to least open.

cc by licence image
Attribution
CC BY
This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation.
This is the most accommodating of licenses offered.
Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
cc by-sa licence image
Attribution - ShareAlike
CC BY-SA
This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses.
All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.
This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
cc by-nd licence image
Attribution - NoDerivs
CC BY-ND
This license lets others reuse the work for any purpose, including commercially; however, it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to you.
cc by licence image
Attribution - NonCommercial
CC BY-NC
This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
cc by-nc-sa licence image
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
CC BY-NC-SA
This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
cc by-nc-nd licence image
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
CC BY-NC-ND
This license is the most restrictive of the six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

From "About the licences" by Creative Commons is licensed under CC BY 4.0

This is a short educational video on how to share downloaded digital content legally using Creative Commons licenses.

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