Open Educational Resources

What are open textbooks?

Open textbooks are open educational resources (OER) which are important to the higher education system in Alberta because they have the potential to:

• increase access to higher education by reducing student costs
• give faculty more control over their instructional resources, and
• move the OER agenda forward in a meaningful, measurable way

Open textbooks are available to read online, download in PDF, ePub, and mobi (Kindle) formats for free, and they are printable.  Studies have shown that:

• Open textbook format (Print vs. Digital) did not impact course performance
• Students using open textbooks performed the same as or better than those using traditional textbooks
• Students rate the open print textbook as higher in quality than the traditional textbook
• Students place a fair price of ~$50 for both traditional and open textbooks

Learn more:

• Introductory Psychology Textbooks: The Roles of Online vs. Print and Open vs. Traditional Textbooks

Source: BC Campus Open Ed

                  

Open Education Alberta

OEA features a variety of openly-licensed textbooks produced by Alberta institutions.

BC Campus OpenEd

One of the leading OER producers in Canada, BC Campus OpenEd features numerous quality open textbooks in a variety of digital formats.

eCampus Ontario

The home of Open Educational Resources in Ontario, eCampus Ontario features more than 500 free and openly-licensed educational resources.

Openstax

An ed-tech initiative based at Rice University, Openstax provides peer-reviewed, openly-licensed textbooks which are available in free digital formats, and in print for a nominal fee.

Open Textbook Library

The Open Textbook Library provides a growing catalogue of free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks in a wide variety of subject areas.

LibreTexts

The LibreTexts approach is a highly collaborative open textbook environment, under constant revision by students, faculty, and outside experts to supplant conventional paper-based books.

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)

DOAB is a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open-access books.

Wikibooks

Wikibooks includes textbooks, annotated texts, instructional guides, and manuals.  These materials can be used in a traditional classroom, an accredited or respected institution, a home-school environment, as part of a Wikiversity course, or for self-learning.  

Intech Open

Intech Open is the world's leading publisher of science open-access books, built by scientists for scientists.

Lyryx - Advanced Learning

Lyryx works within the OER community to provide instructors and students with quality online learning options that includes open textbooks.

OER for English Language Learners

With funding from Open Education Alberta, Bow Valley College and NorQuest College collaborated to create OER in the form of eTextbooks intended for immigrant adult learners who require English language programming.

Affordable Learning Georgia

This collection features a variety of open textbooks and ancillary materials, in a variety of disciplines.

Iowa State University Digital Press

A unit of the Iowa State University Library that aims to publish high quality scholarship and features numerous open books and textbooks.

Pressbooks Directory

Pressbooks Directory provides an index of 5,231 books published across 152 Pressbooks networks.

Textbook Equity Open Education

College-level textbooks currently or recently used in U.S. colleges and universities.

Milne Open Textbooks

A catalogue of open textbooks authored and peer-reviewed by SUNY faculty and staff.

ROTEL Project

Remixing Open Textbooks through an Equity Lens is a three year project by six Massachusetts institutions to create free OER and adaptations of existing open textbooks.

 

Unless otherwise noted, MHC's OER website is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.