UMW Professors Transform Education with Open Textbooks - News

"Highlighting? Not allowed. Underlining? Don’t even think about it. That was Caitie Finlayson’s approach to textbooks as a college student. As one of many undergrads who relied on financial aid, she kept pages pristine so the books could be resold for a small portion of the original – and often hefty – sum. Years later, as an assistant professor of geography at UMW, Finlayson received a grant from the Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation to revise her World Regional Geography course. She chose to write an open textbook that would make geography accessible to the masses – at no cost. Two years later, her World Regional Geography textbook – published under an open license, which allows free sharing, editing, and reuse – has been downloaded over 2,000 times in over 30 countries. It has also been selected for inclusion in the eGranary Digital Library, which makes websites and digital education resources available to people in developing countries who might lack reliable internet access. The geography textbook is part of a movement at UMW led by a group of faculty passionate about providing open educational resources (OER) in the classroom. Focusing specifically on open textbooks, the group – Open UMW – identifies existing open access resources and encourages faculty to either adopt them or create their own open textbooks....

In addition to the Open Textbook Library workshops, UMW Libraries has created an online guide to help faculty take a first step in looking for open educational resources for their courses...."