Open Textbooks, Open Doors

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On May 6th, from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM in College of the Redwood's Lakeview Room, I held a workshop on open texts called "Open Textbooks, Open Doors." There were seats for 30 and we filled 20 of them. We had a mix of faculty, students, library and bookstore folks. There were great examples of open texts right here on our campus with Dave Arnold's Math textbooks. We also had people from Humboldt State University attend.

I have included our agenda and discussion questions in this posting. This is a link to the resource page for the presentation along with a link to the powerpoint presentation which I based on information from Student PIRG and other sources (it is the slideshare called "Open Textbooks, Open Doors"): http://geoffcain.wikispaces.com/OER

Open Textbooks Agenda

10:00 AM
1. Introductions
2. What is a textbook and why are they so expensive?
3. Copyright, Public Domain, and Creative Commons

10:30 AM
4. The Open Source Concept
5. What is an Open Text?
6. Some Examples
7. Organizations for Open Texts

11:00 AM
~Break~
8. Advantages of Open Texts
9. Disadvantages
10. Vetting and Reviewing
11. Alternative Business Models

11:30 AM
12. Example: Dave Arnold's Math Text

12:00 PM
~Lunch~

1:00 PM
13. Finding Your Text
14. Collaborating with Others

Open Textbooks, Open Doors
Discussion Questions

1. What do you consider to be the main benefit to open texts?

2. What do you see as the greatest drawback?

3. What are some barriers to adoption on your campus or in your dept.?

4. What are some strategies to overcoming those barriers?

5. There is a resource page at http://geoffcain.wikispaces.com/oer for this workshop,
What resources (subject matter, adoption strategies, rubrics, etc.) would you find useful?