Open Textbooks
An emerging development in OER is open textbooks, which are textbooks that are freely available with nonrestrictive licenses. -OpenStax
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. - Hewlett Foundation
The authors of the original Open Textbook Initiative proposal at George Fox made a strategic decision to focus on open textbooks specifically rather than all OER. We used part of our first year funding to join the Open Textbook Network along with over 600 active network campuses. - May, 2016
The Open Textbook Network (OTN) promotes access, affordability, and student success through the use of open textbooks.
"We believe in the power of open education to transform higher education. Open textbooks not only contribute to student academic success, but also offer faculty the chance to reclaim their courses based on their expertise." - OTN
The Open Textbook Library
Creative Commons
Creative Commons
"The Creative Commons copyright licenses and tools forge a balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved” setting that copyright law creates. Our tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work." - About the Licenses, What our licenses do
Educause ELI Presentation
Our ELI presentation slides below are also available to download in PDF format from our Digital Commons institutional repository.
Textbook Affordability After <Two Years
For the past two years, the university’s library has worked with faculty to save students $797,893* in textbook costs. It’s happened in two ways: through the Open Textbook Initiative, which provided incentives for faculty to use a textbook available for free in the Open Textbook Library, and by employing the use of e-books whenever possible...Read More
Open Textbooks at George Fox University–Year 3 (Faculty Presentation)
Update: Open Textbook Results 2017- Spring 2018
Update: Second year of our Open Textbook Initiative. After our second year, the total in student savings from open textbooks alone comes to $375, 086!
Several faculty members have replaced expensive publisher textbooks with open textbooks, or even authored their own. Jennie Harrop's writing textbook is now part of the Open Textbook Library, and an open textbook by the seminary’s Nijay Gupta and some of his graduate students will be published this summer. A third faculty-authored open textbook is scheduled for release in the fall. In 2017-18 alone, use of open textbooks reduced student costs by $256,231 – up from $118,855 in the program’s first year.
Open Textbook Initiative Start of Year 2
GFU Open Textbook Initiative Results Fall 2016-Spring 2017 Year 1
This Library blog post features faculty participants leading to over $118,000 in student savings from open textbooks after our first two semesters!