Open Educational Resources: September 2009

9/28/2009

Durbin Introduces Legislation to Make College Textbooks more Affordable

Article

WASHINGTON, DC--(ENEWSPF)--September 24, 2009. Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) today introduced legislation designed to help students manage costs by making textbooks available to students, professors and the public for free on an easily-accessible website. This bill, known as the Open College Textbook Act, would create a competitive grant program for institutions of higher education, professors and organizations to create textbooks that can be made available online and licensed under terms that grant the public the right to access, customize and distribute the material, also known as “open textbooks”.

“Over the past decade, I have watched textbook publishers use technology to drive up the cost of textbooks through unnecessary online supplements and CD-ROMs,” said Durbin. “Today, the average college student spends between $800 and $1,200 on textbooks every year. It is time that we use the potential of technology to improve college access, learning and affordability for all students. I believe the Open College Textbook Act that I am introducing today will accomplish that goal.”

According to the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, 200,000 qualified students fail to enroll in college each year due to cost. The high cost of college textbooks can be a significant financial barrier for many students. At the same time, the growth of the Internet has enabled the creation and sharing of open content, including open educational resources.

http://durbin.senate.gov/showRelease.cfm?releaseId=318279

The Open College Textbook Act would:

* Authorize funding through fiscal year 2015 for the Secretary of Education to award one-year competitive grants to create, update or adapt high-quality introductory level open college textbooks;

* Require applicants to provide a plan for quality review, a plan to ensure the widest possible availability of the textbook, a plan to ensure the widest possible adoption of the textbook in college courses and a plan for tracking and reporting adoptions of the text book at colleges;

* Require the Secretary of Education to give special consideration to applicants that demonstrate the ability to produce the highest quality textbooks, textbooks for the highest enrollment college courses, textbooks that are easily used by professors and textbooks in partnership with an organization to assist in marketing and distribution;

* Require a report to the Secretary of Education from the grant recipient detailing the costs of the project and a report from the Secretary to Congress on the savings generated for students through the use of open textbooks; and

* Direct that any curriculum or textbook created through federal grants for use in classrooms be licensed under an open license and made freely available to the public.

9/26/2009

Florida Lightens the Financial (and Physical) Burden of Textbooks

Chronicle Article: By Ben Terris

Inside Higher Ed Article

In an effort to bring down the cost of learning materials, a new project will allow Florida college students to get digital versions of some of their textbooks free of charge, The St. Petersberg Times reported on Thursday.

The undertaking, called Orange Grove Texts Plus, is being spearheaded by the University Press of Florida with support from the state’s digital library database.

The project houses 124 books that students can either read free online, or -- if they prefer ink and paper -- have printed and bound at a much cheaper price than the original, the Times says.

The article says the average yearly cost of textbooks for Florida students exceeds $1,200 dollars.

While the project aims to decrease this burden for students, Meredith Babb, director of the press, told the Times that she expected some objections from professors who can earn large amounts of money publishing nationally circulated books. "The model has always been to throw a chunk of money at a professor to write a book that can be used nationally," Ms. Babb told the newspaper. "What we are trying to do is turn the paradigm on its ear and say, 'It's not about a professor getting rich. It's about affordability for students.'"

9/25/2009

U.S. Undersecretary of Education & OER

Dr. Martha Kanter, U.S. Undersecretary of Education, was in WA this week talking about Higher Education.

Video: http://www.scctv.net/sccd/kanter_roundtable.asx

Martha Kanter’s introductory comments: 14:35
Open Educational Resources question: 57:40

9/23/2009

Open Letter on Open Access

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/23/access

The presidents of 57 liberal arts colleges released an open letter on Tuesday endorsing the Federal Research Access Act of 2009, a bill aimed at increasing public access to academic research that is funded by the federal government.

The bill would require certain federal agencies -- those that fund more than $100 million in extramural research annually -- to require peer-reviewed journals that publish that research to make it available for free on the Web after six months. It would be “a major step forward in ensuring equitable online access to research literature that is paid for by taxpayers,” according to the presidents' letter.

9/14/2009

5 Major Research Universities Endorse Open-Access Journals

Breakthrough on Open Access (Inside Higher Ed)

For years, as more academics have embraced "open access" publishing -- in which journals are published online and free -- a constant refrain from many publishers has been that the model would deprive them of the revenue they need for high quality editing and peer review. That argument was at the center of a recent report on the economics of journal publishing commissioned by the National Humanities Alliance. That argument was also cited by the Association of American University Presses to oppose federal open access requirements -- over the objections of some of its members.

On Monday, five leading universities announced a new "Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity" in which they have pledged to develop systems to pay open access journals for the articles they publish by the institutions' scholars. In doing so, the institutions are attempting to put to rest the idea that only older publication models (paid and/or print) can support rigorous peer review and quality assurance.

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Chronicle Article

In an effort to support alternatives to traditional scholarly publishing, five major research universities announced their joint commitment to open-access journals on Monday.

The institutions—Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley—signed a compact agreeing to the “timely establishment” of mechanisms for providing financial support for free open-access journals.

9/05/2009

Math in Society: Open Textbook (Pierce College!)

David Lipmann, professor at Pierce College in Washington State, has released his new open textbook,”Math in Society.”

The textbook is available for free online at http://www.pierce.ctc.edu/dlippman/mathinsociety/