KSU Professor Developing ‘Flexbooks,’ The Textbook Of The Future. There’s a new term you should add to your vocabulary. It’s ‘flexbooks’ and a Kansas State University assistant professor is hoping they change the way you teach. Click here to view an actual flexbook used at Kansas State University. E-textbooks are nothing new, neither are digital publications that you can actually update. Places like Academic Pub , Kno , and CourseSmart (amongst many others) all offer options but the term flexbooks is completely new. I kinda like it. Assistant Professor Brian Lindshield says the flexbooks are designed to be read online and easy to update.
Best of all, Professor Lindshield’s flexbook is free to students and is currently being used at a human nutrition course at Merrimack College in Massachusetts. What was the impetus for flexbooks? Open source textbook publisher projects $1M in savings. OpenStax has been well received on college campuses as textbook prices remain stubbornly high By Dennis Carter, Assistant EditorRead more by Denny Carter August 14th, 2012 Educators at 55 colleges will use OpenStax books this fall.
College students in some of the most heavily attended courses in the country will eclipse $1 million in textbook savings after a Rice University-based publisher had 13,000 open-source books downloaded since June. OpenStax College, a start-up online textbook publisher launched early this year, announced Aug. 14 that its first two book titles, College Physics and Introduction to Sociology, have sold more than 13,000 free copies – enough to save students $1 million during the upcoming fall semester. Baraniuk’s goal is to save college students $95 million over the next five years.
Open-textbook activists said skeptics of low-cost and free textbooks shouldn’t scoff at OpenStax’s modest adoption rate. “A bad book is still a bad book, even if it’s free,” Harris said. A People's History of the United States. Open Book Project. Flat World Knowledge. Global Text Project. OER Commons.
Build Your Own Digital Textbooks. When the governors of the nation's two most populous states bang the drum for schools to switch to electronic textbooks, you gotta think that the transition away from paper and toward digital devices would be rapidly under way.
Indeed, the big three textbook publishers do offer nearly all of their products in a digital form, just as they're scrambling to keep up with demand for supplemental, game-like resources. But while the rallying cry for open-source digital textbooks is coming from California and Texas, the real revolution is happening elsewhere. Create Your OwnIn districts from Arizona to Indiana, educators are opting out of textbooks altogether, culling from vetted electronic resources and courseware to essentially create their own texts.
Online articles, simulations, and audiovisual files, along with lesson plans shared through wikis, can be found on the syllabi for a growing number of secondary classes. What to Do Now? "We basically said, ‘Ew. Sick of paying for textbooks? Get them now, free and online. In the same way that free open online courseware is threatening to disrupt traditional universities, open textbook initiatives such as OpenStax College from Rice University threaten to do the same to the traditional textbook market.
OpenStax College has taken five of the most popular topics taught in American universities and produced high quality peer-reviewed textbooks that are available for anyone to download for free. OpenStax College aims to try and save students at least $90 million over five years by capturing 10% of the US textbook market. Authors of textbooks in Flat World Knowledge receive a royalty on sales of printed versions of their textbooks, whereas authors contributing towards Rice University’s venture are volunteering their efforts.
Bookboon funds open access through the inclusion of advertising in the books. The move to electronic textbooks is something that students have adopted with gusto. Spending time searching for a free textbook is probably not a priority.