Growing Pains Begin to Emerge in Open-Textbook Movement - The Chronicle of Higher Education

lterrat's bookmarks 2017-04-12

Summary:

"Some open-resources advocates think the model of depending on grant money to roll out textbooks is doomed to fail. What happens when fickle philanthropists lose interest and move on to the next thing? And even OER textbooks need to be updated regularly — who’s going to pay for that?

Many colleges are exploring fees to maintain the textbooks — which suggests that the term 'zero textbook cost' could soon be on the way out. Lane is considering a fee of $1 per credit hour, which, among other things, would pay the salary of a new full-time OER librarian whose job is currently supported by grants. Bay College is also considering a nominal fee for its OER courses.

Chemeketa Community College, in Salem, Ore., is taking a different path. It is competing with the big publishers by producing its own printed textbooks through what it calls Chemeketa Press. The books use original content from the college’s own faculty and openly licensed materials, and are sold for a fraction of the price of commercial textbooks.

The college’s art faculty came to Chemeketa Press and said they thought they could make a better textbook than the $210 book that they had been assigning, says Steve Richardson, the press’s managing editor. That experience was full of challenges — including when he realized that a draft of the art textbook had openly licensed photos of unlicensed art. Donations by local artists ultimately helped make the book, Art for Everyone, possible. It sells for $28, and the press’s math and writing textbooks cost even less.

Revenue is being used to recover the book’s development costs and eventually will be recycled into the creation of new books.

Mr. Richardson believes the college is more likely to succeed using that model than if it were to depend on grant dollars to pay for the adoption of open resources. 'We sell our books at an affordable price, and students will save a ton of money,' he says. 'But we’re not giving it away.'"

Link:

http://www.chronicle.com/article/Growing-Pains-Begin-to-Emerge/239701/?key=XaMJFpx9opKst2jyIKXWQq9XtCiZ66YGTLowmDR2Ke8tAVnpj8y1pOHMMpU5YhNFQWROeVU3S0NPR0FoRmFtcEpKaFB3R1lrNkN0bTJrZnVnQkRsSTQtTFd4Yw

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » lterrat's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.books

Date tagged:

04/12/2017, 20:23

Date published:

04/12/2017, 16:23