Increasing Access to Knowledge Through Digital Textbooks

“At the 2012 Innovate conference, Steve Acker and Victoria Getis spoke to the benefits of using digital textbooks for both educators and students, in ‘Digital Textbooks: Social and Economic Factors of Diffusion.’ Steve Acker is a Research Director for The Ohio Bookshelf Project at OhioLINK, and Victoria Getis is the Director of the Digital Union at The Ohio State University. Acker and Getis began by surveying the audience’s awareness and use of educational technology, including digital textbooks. Acker stressed the need for low-cost and open-source textbooks for students to help supplement the rising cost of education. It seems that many teachers and students are unaware of the available resources for low-cost and free textbooks. Some of the resources illustrated were: The Ohio Digital Bookshelf, Ohio’s Scaffold to the Stars, Flat World Knowledge, and OpenStax. All of these services and organizations share a common goal: to reduce the financial burden on students while ensuring access to necessary resources.  The Ohio Digital Bookshelf is a pilot project with the goal of providing textbook options to faculty while simultaneously reducing student expenses. Ohio’s Scaffold to the Stars is sponsored by the Next Generation Learning Challenge grant and provides free, modular resources to students of all levels. Flat World Knowledge is the largest publisher of free college textbooks, and the service also allows teachers to customize their textbooks. Finally, OpenStax, a nonprofit organization, works to provide free, open-source, and high-quality textbooks and eBooks for college level courses. The idea of providing low-cost or free textbooks to all students may seem radical, especially after considering the current business model for physical textbooks. However, after seeing what efforts have already been made in this direction, I believe it is a real possibility. If publishers, faculty, and students can embrace an open-source model to educational materials, the focus may shift away from the difficulty of obtaining resources, and focus instead on learning experiences.”