... This week, dozens of professors from colleges across the country are meeting with representatives from nonprofit groups and for-profit companies that are in the digital textbook market to talk about ways of developing and promoting online content.
The first phase of the “Community College Open Textbook Project” is being funded by a one-year, $500,000-plus grant to the Foothill-De Anza Community College District from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
As part of the project, community college professors will receive training on how to find and customize material. One objective is for participants to create online textbooks, largely culled from existing resources, in high-demand courses such as statistics.
Baker, director of the project, is also bringing together professors to review the academic quality of the material, with the idea of coming away with peer-reviewed textbooks. These are faculty members who are part of the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, a group that has met since last summer and operates a Web site for faculty looking to get information about open access textbooks. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 4/29/2008 03:36:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
