Martha J. Kanter's Page

Please join the growing number of professors, students and staff who are working to create, repurpose and use open textbooks in America's community colleges. Increasing Quality and Reducing Cost are the two main purposes of our work to make Open Textbooks a common standard in our courses. Our main barrier is the lack of knowledge about open textbooks and the time it takes professors to learn about and use what's freely available so that open textbooks can be adopted across the country. Widespread use is our goal. But open textbooks must be the highest quality, culturally relevant and technologically robust. The first Open Textbook "Collaborative Statistics" is now being pilot tested by 14 professors. We are conducting research to learn about their experiences so we can document the feasibility of open textbooks and encourage the development and adoption of more open textbooks across all disciplines. We have also joined the Open Course movement so that open textbooks can be coupled with the full set of course materials. Why are we interested? Too many students aren't completing a college education because of cost and, as a society, we must do everything we can to increase the success and retention rates of our students. Thanks for listening.