This is another post in my series of posts showing gratitude and appreciation for members of the open education community.
Today I’m going to focus on the Open Textbook Network. From their website:
The Open Textbook Network (OTN) helps higher education institutions and systems advance the use of open textbooks and practices on their campuses. We maintain the Open Textbook Library, the premiere resource for peer-reviewed academic textbooks. All of our textbooks are free, openly licensed, and complete; their adoption creates a measurable, positive impact on student success. With our members, we move the open education conversation forward on local and national levels.
OTN is a membership organization. They estimate that OER adoptions on their 600 member campuses have saved students over $8.5 million dollars. Much of this savings is attributable to the workshops their incredible team of presenters offer. 45% of faculty who attend one of these workshops adopt OER for their course. OTN invests significant effort in facilitating peer reviews of the textbooks in their collection. These reviews are openly published on their website and licensed CC BY, which enables them to be used in a range of applications. Their Adaptable OER Publishing Agreement is a model agreement for institutions that want to contract with their faculty to create OER. Their Authoring Open Textbooks Guide includes a checklist for getting started, publishing program case studies, textbook organization and elements, writing resources and an overview of useful tools. Their Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know is a five-step guide for faculty (and those who support faculty) who want to modify an open textbook. They run a Summer Institute and Summit each year.
For all these reasons and more, I’m grateful for the Open Textbook Network and all the wonderful things they do for the open education community. Share some love forOpen Textbook Network in the comments below.