Over the last three years, the Open Textbook Library, now hosting upwards of 175 complete open textbook titles, has built these titles’ credibility and increased faculty exposure to open textbooks by incentivizing textbook reviews by faculty from institutions across the country. Libraries have been at the core of our outreach and are our most integral partners in reaching faculty and building capacity on campuses for open textbooks. At the invitation of our partner libraries, we’ve visited dozens of schools to seed and support their open education programs. As a result, our partner institutions’ data shows that over 40% of their faculty attendees to our workshops adopt an open textbook. This small pilot group of faculty has saved students over $410,000 in textbook costs in less than three years. This presentation will introduce attendees to the Open Textbook Network - a consortium of institutions working to help faculty overcome barriers to adoption of open textbooks, increase institutional capacity to support faculty adoption and use of open textbooks, and collaboratively develop new understandings and best practices of open textbook adoption and use. Attendees will learn more about what’s to come for the Open Textbook Library, our partners, our data, and why open textbooks are a sustainable avenue towards initiating and sustaining open education programming.

1. The Open Textbook Network:
Libraries Working Together to
Advance Open Textbooks
Sarah Faye Cohen
Managing Director
Open Textbook Network
Center for Open Education
University of Minnesota

2. This morning…
• What is the Open Textbook Library?
• Why open textbooks?
• Why a network?
• Where are we headed?

3. What are the barriers that keep faculty
from adopting open textbooks?

4. http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthecurriculum2014.pdf

5. When it comes to OER, faculty:
a) Don’t know where to find them,
b) Don’t know if they are any good.

6. That’s
where
we
come in.

7. 178 books
204 reviews
open.umn.edu: a catalog of complete, openly licensed
textbooks.

8. Textbooks that are reviewed by faculty,
for faculty.

10. WHY ARE WE TALKING ONLY ABOUT
OPEN TEXTBOOKS AND NOT OER MORE
GENERALLY?

11. Open textbooks are one type of OER
that faculty understand.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/timuiuc/4232485465

12. +
+

14. 39%
Adoption rate of workshop attendees
(14% - 65%)
+
+

15. Oregon
Community
College Distance
Learning
Association

16. Oregon
Community
College Distance
Learning
Association
20 members
76 institutions
…and growing.

17. What are the barriers that keep faculty
from adopting open textbooks?
How can we help other institutions build
local sustainable open textbook
programs?

18. Oregon
Community
College Distance
Learning
Association
Bring OTN institutions together to:
1. enhance open textbook program
development across OTN
members,
2. envision the future of OTN with our
members, and
3. strengthen presentation capacity
for future open textbook
workshops.
Open Textbook Network
Summer Institute

19. Develop new
strategies to scale

20. Focus on evidence of impact
https://www.flickr.com/photos/elsie/12996688414/

22. Open Textbook Research Fellows
• 5 faculty each year
• 3 days working with the Open Ed Group
(http://openedgroup.org) to design research to deepen
our understanding of the efficacy of open textbooks.
• Sample research questions might be:
– What happens to student learning outcomes when open
textbooks replace commercial textbooks?
– What are the perceptions of professors and students
regarding the OER utilized in their classrooms?
– Does there seem to be any difference in student learning
outcomes when professors actively exercise 5R
permissions with the OER?

23. What can you do?
• Learn
– About open textbooks. And what books are available for what
disciplines.
– #opentextbooks #textbookbroke or #OER on Twitter.
• Share
– Open Textbooks as an option for faculty
– Suggestions for additions to the Open Textbook Library
– What you learn with peers, partners, and colleagues.
• Support
– Exploration and adoption of open textbooks.
– Interest in creating open textbooks or supplemental materials.
• Join
– sparc-liboer@arl.org to participate in discussions about libraries and
OER
– The Open Textbook Network

24. Thank you.
sfcohen@umn.edu
@thesheck
Library: open.umn.edu
Network: z.umn.edu/opentextbooks