Adopt

Adoption of Open Textbooks

Quick Start

To use open textbooks in your courses, follow these steps:

Step 1: Find an open textbook from the listing at the Community College Consortium of Open Educational Resources and other sources.

Step 2: Review your open textbook selection for quality based on criteria.

Step 3: Customize your selection as desired.

Step 4: Disseminate your the open textbook to your students.

Quick Start

Step 1:  Find an Open Textbook 

Search for an open textbook from the following sources:

• MERLOT
• Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources
• Global Text Project
• OER Commons
• Orange Grove
• Connexions
• USG Share (click on on word - guest)
• Textbook Revolution
• The Assayer
• Wikibooks
• CK12 Flexbooks
• Flat World Knowledge
• Public Literature
• Questia
• Audio Books

Quick Start

Step 2:  Review and Select an Open Textbook

As you search for open textbooks in repositories, consider what criteria you will use to select appropriate an open textbook for your own use. You can develop your own criteria or consider adapting existing criteria from other sources.

Make your selection based on criteria such as:

Also, check for ratings, reviews or endorsements of open textbooks and OER by professional societies and organizations.  For example, some professional organizations use an endorsement Lens at Connexions to indicate that content meets their minimum standards.

Quick Start

Step 3: Customize your selection as desired.

Few existing open textbooks will meet all your instructional needs so you may want to customize the open textbook you have selected. 

Consider the following ways you may want to modify the open textbook to make it more appropriate for your teaching style:

• Combine two or more open textbooks and OER.
• Rearrange the content in the open textbook.
• Add a glossary, hyperlinks, and test bank.
• Make edits to improve accuracy and currency.
• Make the content usable by students with visual impairment.

The BookBuilder tool at CAST is just one of several tools that can be used to create your own customized version of the open textbook.  Another tool is available from BongoBooks.

If the open textbook you selected is in the Connexions repository, you can make your own copy of the open textbook then make your own modifications as a 'derivative work.'

CK12 and Flat World Knowledge allow for development of modified versions of open textbooks.

Quick Start

Step 4:  Disseminate Your Open Textbook to Your Students

Disseminate your open textbook in either digital or print format to students in your course.  Be sure to give your students clear instructions about appropriate use of printing services on your campus. Try to coordinate with the student computer labs, library, bookstore, and printshop on your campus.

Do-It-Yourself

1.  Email the website address of the open textbook to your students.

2.  Download the open textbook as a file (e.g., Word, Open Office, PDF).  Email the file to your enrolled students.

3.  Post the website address or document file to your students' course management system course site.

If the Word document file or PDF is too large to email or post, use a free online file storage or file sharing service

• Box.net
• BT Digital Vault
• Openomy Tour of Lulu

Students can download and print the Word document file, PDF, or website contents.

Campus Printshop

Printing Services

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License

2009