The Open Textbooks Project was started in October 2012 and is intended to raise awareness about alternatives to traditional textbooks and make textbooks chosen by UPEI faculty available to students. The Open Textbook Working Group is facilitating these efforts, with assistance from the Robertson Library. More information about the Open Textbook Working Group.
Open Textbooks are Open Educational Resources (OER)
Open textbooks are open educational resources (OER); they are instructional resources created and shared in ways so that more people have access to them. That’s a different model than traditionally-copyrighted materials. OER are defined as “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others” (Hewlett Foundation).
Open Educational Resources are important to our campus community because they have the potential to:
- reduce student costs;
- ensure equitable access to learning resources;
- give faculty more control over their instructional materials - they can reuse and adapt OERs to suit their own contexts;
- students can also be producers of OERs;
- get our campus talking about OERs and how they can transform education.
Known Open Textbooks Adoptions at UPEI
- Reports from the OpenTextbook Working Group
- 2014 Report (1st report from the WG)
- Open Textbooks previously adopted but no longer in use
- Business 101 - Exploring Business [course no longer offered]
For information about this initiative contact Donald Moses, Interim University Librarian (902-566-0460, dmoses@upei.ca)