What if the best textbooks available cost $15?
We are on a Mission to make that happen!
- Our online homework system is trusted by thousands of instructors and has supported OpenStax textbooks for over a decade.
- Too many of these instructors described to us the challenges associated with making free textbooks work, especially in the absence of a real way to customize them.
- Our first step was to build an Editable eBooks platform that allows instructors to modify these books as needed.
- We established authoring and editorial teams to work on new editions and needed variations of the texts.
- Our technological platform facilitates collaborative writing. It helps to identify the difference between ‘one-off’ changes that are instructor preference, versus changes that are consensus needed adjustments.
- Instructors can opt-in and allow their customizations to be used to improve the main versions of the books.
- Acting as the central organization, we bring a technological framework designed for this job, attention to detail, and true passion to work with educators.
Our job is to help separate the signal from noise.
Introductory Astronomy as an Example
It became clear that instructors were frequently needing the same customizations; for example removing significant material from OpenStax’s single Astronomy book in order to create an “Essentials” version. We ultimately created six new versions and have greatly increased instructor choice for an affordable Astronomy textbook.
An Invitation to Consider these for your Course
Immediately, for any title, you can start with one of the OpenStax textbooks or one of our new versions, and customize it to perfectly align with the sequence and scope of your course. If you feel strongly that “it must be free”, please read the segment below and hear our thoughts about the benefits of low-cost and how your students would likely embrace that.
An Invitation to Join the Cause
If you are a passionate educator and want to help make incredible textbooks and educational materials, we would love to hear from you. Apply to be a paid contributor on one of several teams: editorial oversight, textbook authoring, online homework content creator, or be a paid reviewer.
A Little about our Inspiration
“For over 200 years, traditional publishing has followed the same formula — select a few authors, assign an editor, and revise through multiple editions over time. Wikipedia demonstrated the power of large-scale collaboration, disrupting how certain types of content, like encyclopedias, are created. While textbooks can’t follow a single-template model due to varied teaching styles, we believe multiple exceptional versions can exist for a given subject. Imagine what 200 college-level instructors could build together with the right tools and a shared vision.”
Dr. Jeremy Morton, CEO Expert TA
Our Vision
Incredible Books created with the Power of Collaboration
Our long-term goal is to help make the best textbooks ever written, and keep them at an affordable price indefinitely, something on the order of $15. The Editable eBooks platform is the start of that. As instructors make edits, they can opt-in and allow those edits to benefit the community. Other instructors will be able to see those changes, and so will our editorial teams.
Expectation of Different Versions
There are, after all, different approaches to teaching almost any subject. We don’t expect after this that there will be one ‘perfect’ textbook for physics, or algebra, or chemistry, or …. for any given subject for that matter, that an entire community will agree on. We do expect there will be two, or three, really ‘great’ books for each course.
Credit where Credit is Due
Almost all of our early adopters have opted-in, allowing us to take the best of their edits and roll them into our main version of the books.
Note: We understand the importance of credit where credit is due. Any and all edits that make their way into a main version, will be cited and/or acknowledged appropriately. We also plan to provide summary information for instructors within the editor, about how their edits are contributing to the overall quality of the book. This kind of information is important in general, but especially for faculty as related to supporting evidence to include in reports for tenure and promotion.
Our Role
Our role is to help by creating a platform that facilitates such large scale collaboration, as well as establishing and overseeing the faculty-based editorial teams that will curate the information, evaluate individual customizations, and decide how to update the textbooks accordingly.
Interested in being part of the Editorial Team for one of the books? Use the form on this page to get in contact with us.
An Example of the Challenge, and our Efforts to Help
Introductory Astronomy as a Case Study
The Situation
- There are more than a half-dozen distinct approaches within Introductory Astronomy texts. They differ in ways like,
- Scope and Topic Coverage: For example, Astronomy Essentials would cover less and make sense for a lighter course.
- Sequence: The order in which the material is covered can vary widely.
- Any instructor who has taught using one of these books would have established lecture notes, PowerPoint Slides, and other course materials that fit with the approach of that textbook.
- OpenStax has only one OER Introductory Astronomy book.
An Example of an Outcome we should all want to Avoid
- Imagine an instructor who adopts a free book, but doesn’t like the way topics are presented in a few chapters.
- that instructor supplements with his or her own materials and then provides instructions like, ,
- Some students miss that direction and look at the wrong material.
“…for week number 3, we won’t look at the chapter from the book, but rather use the PDF posted on the class webpage..”.
We are told by instructors that this happens more often than they would like.
The Challenge for Instructors
Instructional approaches do vary. For most courses, OpenStax only has one textbook to choose from. If an instructor’s current textbook and approach different from the approach of that book, a transition to that book can involve a significant amount of work. At a minimum the instructor would need to,
- Redesign all of their course materials (lecture notes, PowerPoints, etc.) to reference the new material and match its sequence.
- Heavily edit the OpenStax Astronomy book in order to match their existing materials
What we are Doing
- To reduce these barriers for faculty, we did the work for them.
- We evaluated the approach in the most broadly used Introductory Astronomy textbooks.
- We worked with the Astronomy instructors who were already using our online homework, and wanting to use one of these “modified” versions of the book.
- We made six new versions of the text, all of which were based off of the original OpenStax text.
Why Low-Cost can be Better than Free
A $15 textbook that is custom designed for a course is better than a free textbook that creates extra work and confusion for students.
Most students and parents don’t want $300 textbooks, but most also don’t think they have to be free. Consider that sales of Cliff’s Notes are still high (roughly $15). Students will readily pay a reasonable amount for resources that they think will help them do better in a course.
Realistically not all faculty tasked with teaching an introductory course, are able to dedicate their full time and attention and put in place free resources in a seamless and organized way. Many have research, graduate students, and other things that get in the way. If the expectation set is that materials MUST be free, often students will be presented with something cobbled together that is less clear and less quality than it could be.
An instructor that supplements with his or her own materials might provide instructions like, “…for week number 3, we won’t look at the chapter from the book, but rather use the PDF posted on the class webpage..”. Often students miss such directions, and wind up reviewing the wrong material.
It is a situation at least worth considering, and perhaps worthy of a poll to students to see how they feel.