Free, Open-Source Digital Textbook Provider, Boundless, Releases Its Content Under Creative Commons | TechCrunch

abernard102@gmail.com 2013-01-24

Summary:

"Since first emerging early last year, Boston-based startup Boundless has been on a mission to give students a free alternative to the financial and physical costs of bulky backpacks brimming with pricey hard-copy textbooks. Co-founders Ariel Diaz, Brian Balfour and Aaron White believe that the incumbents, the old-school textbook publishers (the top four of which still control the market) have been driving up the cost of educational content for years, so Boundless has been fighting the Powers That Be by offering a free, digital alternative culled from existing, open educational resources. Naturally, with their 'open' approach to curating educational content, Boundless has been met with a number of lawsuits from top textbook publishers and is currently trying to resolve these differences in court. But, in the meantime, it’s pressing on and is today officially adding a familiar name — some legitimacy — to its open textbooks through Creative Commons. The startup has released 18 open textbooks that features content licensed by Creative Commons, under the very same license used by Wikipedia, in fact. The 18 textbooks cover college subjects that range from accounting and biology to sociology and economics, and with content now licensed under Creative Commons, Boundless is assuaging some of the concern that teachers might feel over using open textbooks — as compared to the more 'trusted' (or controlled) content from the familiar names. Co-founder Ariel Diaz says that students at more than half of the colleges in the U.S. have used Boundless’ resources to date and, as a result of Creative Commons’ blessing, he expects this number to grow. Boundless offers an entire section on its website devoted to explaining how it uses open educational resources and describes best practices for users, but users of its free textbooks will find that, at the end of each chapter, sources are cited as a list of links where students can locate the original material..."

Link:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/22/free-open-source-digital-textbook-provider-boundless-releases-its-content-under-creative-commons/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.licensing oa.comment oa.copyright oa.best_practices oa.cc oa.oer oa.costs oa.students oa.litigation oa.textbooks oa.prices oa.courseware oa.boundless oa.books oa.libre

Date tagged:

01/24/2013, 09:49

Date published:

01/24/2013, 04:49