This leaflet has been produced in the context of C-SAP [Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics] Open Educational Resources Phase II project: Cascading Social Science Open Educational Resources. This project seeks to cascade support for embedding Open Educational Resources within the social sciences curriculum.

1. Resources on open textbooks
This leaflet has been produced in the context of C-SAP [Higher Education Academy Subject
Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics] Open Educational Resources Phase II
project: Cascading Social Science Open Educational Resources.This project seeks to cascade
support for embedding Open Educational Resources within the social sciences curriculum.
For most up-to-date information about the project, please refer to the “Open cascade” blog.
Open textbooks initiatives
The Open Access Textbooks Project
The Open Access Textbooks Project is a two-year initiative to create a sustainable
model for the discovery, production, and dissemination of open textbooks, focusing on
lessons learned in open textbook initiatives across the United States. The overall goal of the
project is to promote awareness of and cooperation among open textbook initiatives. The
website hosts various resources, including links to articles and conference proceedings,
relevant legislation, reports as well as non-commercial open textbook initiative websites. In
particular, resources on recognizing and rewarding faculty digital scholarly work might be
relevant in light of similar discussions on reward and recognition in the context of UK Open
Educational Resources programme.
Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources
The Consortium is a joint effort by the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, the
League for Innovation in the Community College and other community colleges and
university partners to develop and use open textbooks in community college courses. The
project seeks the support of faculty to identify, review, evaluate, and make available high
quality, accessible and culturally relevant model Open Textbooks. There are numerous other
relevant resources, including an accompanying blog, media kit, links to over 500 open
textbooks (searchable by disciplines) as well as self-paced tutorials about open textbooks.
College Open Textbooks
Funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, College Open Textbooks is a
collection of colleges, governmental agencies, education non-profits, and other education-
related organizations that are focused on the mission of driving the awareness and advocacy
for open textbooks. This includes providing training for instructors adopting open
resources, peer reviews of open textbooks, and mentoring online professional networks
that provide support to authors who open their resources. The website provides links to a
list of open textbooks organised by subjects as well as reviews for selected textbooks, where
Copyright C-SAP, 2010. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
2.0 UK: England & Wales http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
1

2. the textbooks are rated (among others) for readability, appropriateness, cultural relevance
and usability of the interface.
Reports on open textbooks
Open Access Textbook Task Force: Final Report
The report has been compiled by the Florida Distance Learning Consortium whose task was
to develop a plan for promoting and increasing the use of open access textbooks as a
method for reducing textbook costs. The report focused on concerns that academic staff
and students have with regard to the adoption of open textbook initiatives. Shared faculty
concerns include: the lack of awareness or use of open access textbooks, assurance of
academic quality, peer review and editing, institutional recognition for efforts in creating
and developing open access materials, and challenges in allocating time for these activities.
Students’ highest ranked concerns were the quality of open access textbooks and their cost.
The Open Revolution: An Environmental Scan of the Open Textbook Landscape
This paper examines the current state of the open textbook movement, focusing on five
open textbook platforms, namely Wikibooks, Connexions, Flat World Knowledge, The Global
Text Project, and Textbook Media. Overall, it provides a very useful overview of the features
of these platforms, including copyright, flexibility, modularity, availability of print-on-
demand facilities, quality control etc.
Peer 2 Peer University* courses on open textbooks
*Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is a grassroots open education project that organizes
learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements.
P2PU creates a model for lifelong learning alongside traditional formal higher education.
Adopting Open Textbooks
The course is based on a 3-step process to adopting open textbooks for educators facilitated
by the College Open Textbook Collaborative. These steps are as follows: discovering and
selecting appropriate open educational materials; following an adoption process which
involves relevant stakeholders (staff, students etc.) within institutional context and finally
sharing the knowledge of discovery and adoption of open educational materials. The course
ran in the spring of 2010, but all relevant resources can still be accessed, including a
checklist for adopting an open textbook and a generic rubric to evaluate remixed/reused
open textbooks.
Copyright C-SAP, 2010. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
2.0 UK: England & Wales http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
2

3. Find, Author, and Share Open Textbooks
The course focuses on skills needed to find high-quality open textbooks and adapt them for
re-use. It explores different authoring and hosting platforms such as Connexions,
Wikibooks, Wikieducator, LeMill, and iTunes University, with an emphasis on addressing
accessibility-related issues. This course is currently running as part of P2P University spring
course offer, and is scheduled to end on 9 March 2011.
Other resources
Webinar: In search of affordable textbooks: how open access can reduce costs
The webinar was organised by Washington State Board for Community and Technical
Colleges on May 12, 2010 and explored issues around finding, creating and maintaining
open textbooks. The event also covered experiences of academic staff, which incorporated
open textbooks into their courses.
Copyright C-SAP, 2010. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
2.0 UK: England & Wales http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
3