Maryland Awards 21 Grants To Prepare 'Open Source' Textbooks (usmd.edu)

"The University System of Maryland has awarded 21 "mini grants" to university faculty to "help them expand open education resources," reports OpenSource.com. Recipients of the grants are also given time off to prepare courses that use open textbooks, and will receive personalized support and training on effective course design. An anonymous reader writes: "Although our faculty view textbooks as essential, some of our students see them as a luxury they cannot afford," said Community College of Baltimore County President Sandra Kurtinitis. "Having access to open educational resources will provide some financial relief for our students as well as contribute to their academic success." The cost of textbooks has risen 812% since 1978, the school system said in an announcement, "outpacing even the cost of medical services and new housing. Nationally, students spend an average of $1,200 a year on textbooks."

The Maryland Open Source Textbook initiative started in 2013 "to provide a state-wide opportunity for faculty to explore the promise of open education resources to reduce students' cost of attendance while maintaining, or perhaps even improving, learning outcomes." Since then it's helped replace traditional textbooks in over 60 different courses at 14 public institutions across the state, resulting in a cumulative cost savings of over $1 million for 3,500 students. "In addition to saving students money, faculty have gained the ability to adapt and customize their instructional materials to ensure they are aligned with their pedagogical methods to best meet their students' needs," the school system reports. "In follow up surveys with students participating in the MOST initiative, 93% reported that the open educational resource content they used was the same or better quality than traditional textbooks."

Comments

The real solution..

[thesupraman]

While this is a good step, the REAL solution is to stop requiring a new edition of the textbook almost annually.

THIS is the huge scam that has created this trap for students. There is almost zero reason for these new additions, however courses often REQUIRE and actually check for them (and often have included coursework, its own scam..).

The problem? This means there is no market for the books second hand!
By allowing a collusion between publishers and courses to effectively kill second hand use of the books, we end up in this situation.

So, just REQUIRE textbooks to have a minimum 5 year life (could easily be 10 years in many subjects).
Refuse any textbooks that are 'licensed' (including non-transferable electronic versions).
Problem solved!

Wont ever happen, people are making too much money screwing over the students, who are too young and green to avoid it.

Smoke and Mirrors

[chill]

Open source textbooks, reference material, and study guides are plentiful. Used textbooks are cheap. Amazon has a great service providing them.

Colleges and Universities frequently require the use of online, "digital learning systems", like Cengage. Access to that site, where the homework is, requires a subscription code that can be hundreds of dollars. A textbook without the "online access code" is a doorstop.

If schools are serious about this, they need to start pushing the use of Moodle instead of Blackboard, and providing high quality open source content including lesson plans, homework, and textbooks.