Faculty & Staff: Open Textbooks
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Open textbooks are flexible in ways that traditional textbooks are not, which gives instructors more freedom to use them in the way that best meets their instructional needs.
Open textbooks are typically authored by faculty and published on the web with the support of universities, non-profit organizations, or new commercial companies. This new business model enables free online access to textbooks. Open textbooks are usually governed by Creative Commons licenses that enable users to download, customize, and/or print the textbook without expressed and prior written consent of the author. New commercial companies provide free access to the textbook content online, while charging lower prices for print products and supplemental services. The inclusion of advertisements can also be a condition of an Open Textbook.
Here are a few locations where you can find open textbooks.
MERLOT has one of the largest collections of open textbooks with thousands of free open textbooks in the collection. As with all MERLOT resources, the textbooks are searchable by topic. Additionally, an Advanced Search tool can be used to find open textbooks by audience, format, license, etc.
Flat World has pioneered a licensing model for institutions and university systems to provide their students with unlimited access to our complete catalog, across multiple devices, for a low annual fee or at no charge. More than 750,000 students at 2,500 schools are using Flat World textbooks worldwide.
OpenStax College offers students free textbooks that meet scope and sequence requirements for most courses. These are peer-reviewed texts written by professional content developers. Adopt a book today for a turnkey classroom solution or modify it to suit your teaching approach. Free online and low-cost in print, OpenStax College books are built for today's student budgets.
The College Open Textbooks Collaborative is collection of colleges, governmental agencies, education non-profits, and other education-related organizations that are focused on the mission of driving awareness, adoptions, and affordability of open textbooks. Our focus is on community colleges and other 2-year institutions of higher education and the first two years (lower division) of 4-year institutions. Some of our activities also apply to K-12, upper division, graduate school, and life-long learning.
The Orange Grove offers open books and textbooks from many sources. An open textbook is one that can be freely viewed, downloaded, and self-printed. They may also have non-restrictive licenses that allow for customization and derivative works. Browse the full list of books, view the textbooks provided in the subtopic folders listed below, or use the Filter function to narrow your search using keywords.
In an effort to reduce costs for students, the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota has created this catalog of open textbooks to be reviewed by faculty members.
Do you want to use open textbooks within your class?
Need some help to make this idea come to life?
Simply send an email to Educational Technology at et@fscj.edu and we would be happy to assist!