The cost of textbooks can be prohibitive to students. Some students do not or cannot buy textbooks. What options do we have?
Google Research on Digital & the New College Experience:
• Today’s college students are highly price-conscious, bearing most or all of their college costs. • The majority research back to school purchases for at least a week, spending an average 7 hours researching online. • When researching where to buy textbooks, they look for low price & convenience, with bookstores losing ground to the Web. • Although not yet mainstream, tablet usage is growing and future consideration of e-textbooks is high. • Using digital materials to supplement classroom learning & studying is now the norm, particularly online searches and videos. Open Text Books: The Current State of Play PDF
We hear a lot in higher education about open educational resources (OER), but how extensively are they being used? Use of open textbooks, one form of OER, is gaining traction across different types of colleges and universities, and the catalog of OER textbooks continues to expand. |
Open Educational Resources (OERs) are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse at no cost. Unlike fixed, copyrighted resources, OER have been authored or created by an individual or organization that chooses to retain few, if any, ownership rights.
OER Commons is a free and expansive online database filled with free courses, textbooks, lesson plans and activities from around the world. This content can be customized to your course. OpenTapestry: Licensed educational resources with an advanced search engine. Create, organize, and manage content. MERLOT: Peer reviewed course content with discipline specific learning materials and exercises. Content categorized by discipline and/or type. Accessible directly through ANGEL! Federal Registry for Educational Excellence: animations, primary documents, photos, & videos . You can browse by subject or standard. Saylor Foundation: 312 courses for K-12 and University in a multitude of formats. TED Talks & TED-Ed: carefully curated educational videos which you can create a customized lesson around. Add questions, discussion topics and other supplementary materials to any educational video on YouTube via TED-Ed Lessons. Khan Academy: free content for students & teachers including lessons & exercises in math, science, finance, history Smart History at Khan Academy is the leading open educational resource for art history. We make high-quality introductory art history content freely available to anyone, anywhere. Smarthistory is a platform for the discipline where art historians contribute in their areas of expertise and learners come from across the globe. http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/1848-1907-Industrial-Revolution-II.html |