Abstract
To address the high cost of textbooks, Rice University’s Connexions and the Community College Open Textbook Project (CCOTP) collaborated to develop a proof-of-concept free and open textbook. The proof-of-concept served to document a workflow process that would support adoption of open textbooks. Open textbooks provide faculty and students with a low cost alternative to traditional publishers’ textbooks and can help to make higher education more affordable. Connexions provides a publishing platform for open textbook projects. The CCOTP acted as a liaison between community college faculty, open textbook authors, and Connexions. Challenges to the production and adoption of open textbooks include 1) faculty members’ and students’ expectations of high production quality and ancillaries for open textbooks, 2) methods for documenting and maintaining control over various versions, and 3) the process of converting existing open content to digital and accessible formats. Connexions holds promise as a means to overcome these challenges.
 
 Connexions identified lessons learned about open textbook production, such as the importance of a style guide, the advantage of assembly-line workflow, and the importance of naming conventions and standard math authoring tools, Connexions also identified lessons learned about open textbook use by students and faculty, e.g., the value of availability and customizability, the importance of interactivity, the difference in how faculty and students view modularity, and the importance of textbook reading navigational aids. The authors note that the CCOTP recommends using Connexions as the common repository for open textbook content in an effort to provide greater national and international access.
Highlights
To address the high cost of textbooks, Rice University’s Connexions and the Community College Open Textbook Project (CCOTP) collaborated to develop a proof-of-concept free and open textbook
The authors note that the CCOTP recommends using Connexions as the common repository for open textbook content in an effort to provide greater national and international access
The study findings indicate a large gap between those willing to use open educational resources (OER) in their classes (91%) and those actively using OER (34%)
Summary
Community colleges educate 44% of the nation’s undergraduates and 50% of the nation’s teachers. The CCOTP contributes to an efficient use of resources at college, district, region, and system levels by providing just such a trusted clearinghouse where community college faculty, staff, and administrators can find information related to open textbooks This saves stakeholders the time and effort of culling through an everincreasing list of websites that make questionable claims about providing high-quality free learning content. Connexions provides a feature called a lens, which allows educators and organizations to vet and endorse content in the repository, much the way they do in the traditional print world Connexions is both a means to create textbooks and a globally accessibly, permanent, and highly searchable repository to house open textbooks, enabling faculty and students to locate open textbooks and relevant OER for use in their classes. In winter/spring 2009, the CCOT Project estimates that Collaborative Statistics was adopted for use in at least 25 course sections including courses taught at Arkansas Tech University, De Anza College, Frederick Community College, Mesa College, Sacramento City College, University of Colorado, San Francisco State University, SUNY-Purchase, University of Toledo, and Virginia Tech University
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