Can open textbooks provide a viable solution to the high cost of textbooks? Are open textbooks quality books? What will encourage faculty to develop or adopt open textbooks? What is a book? How do students prefer to interact with their textbooks? What is the sustainability model for a free and open textbook? How can the development of open textbooks become recognized and rewarded in tenure and promotion decisions? Answers to these challenging questions and more will be offered through the Open Access Textbook Model available from the Open Access Textbooks website. The intended audience for this model includes all who endeavor to bring widespread use of open textbooks into fruition—from faculty authors to student activists to editors at university presses to statewide postsecondary administrators—in the interest of reduced textbook costs, greater accessibility and flexibility of educational materials, and improved learning experiences. The reader’s purposes should drive the selection of individually relevant content in this guide.

The model and all information are freely available, thanks to generous support from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). Florida faculty and student survey results, interviews with OER leaders, articles, open textbook authors and faculty adopters, and lessons learned from Florida’s open textbook initiative—Orange Grove Texts Plus—helped to inform the model. This unique Florida partnership reinvents two existing organizations, the University Press of Florida and The Orange Grove digital repository, to acquire, develop and deliver open textbooks to students at no or low cost with no new funding. Read on to discover how your institution or state can participate in open textbooks and benefit from the evolving and replicable open textbook model.

This open textbook model is designed to develop and test a set of processes and strategies to establish a statewide open textbook initiative intended to reduce textbook costs for students and increase recognition of faculty for open access publishing as a scholarly activity. The results of this approach will be evaluated and a set of guidelines will be the result. As the academic and business worlds interact and change, new opportunities and challenges arise. The open textbook model is intended to be sufficiently adaptable to embrace new opportunities and meet new challenges.

Keywords

business case · case study · distance education · open source · OpenCourseWare · policy · repository · research · textbooks