Will Student Learning Pay a High Price for Free Textbooks? - Online Colleges

"Several recent news reports about the increased frequency of professors opting for free digital textbooks have shown that this trend is turning into a tidal wave that might engulf and drown the big publishing houses. Two business professors at the University of Oklahoma and Auburn University have partnered to offer a free textbook to their students. At Rice University, students in the introductory physics courses will be able to get a free textbook through OpenStaxCollege.org. Options for professors who wish to reduce textbook costs for their students are also growing: the TextbooksFree website lists hundreds of free resources, including textbooks, available to teachers of all levels. Akademos, a digital textbook website, has created a Textbook Adoption Tool to help faculty comparison shop for the best materials, using a search tool that helps them find course materials by cost. There are some concerns about free digital texts that students and faculty should keep in mind, the most important of which is the danger that unrestricted production of textbooks can create for the quality of materials available in any given field...."