Open Educational Resources

Adopt an Open Textbook

Numerous open textbooks already exist for a variety of subject areas. These textbooks can be found by searching the repositories for open textbooks linked from the Home page of this guide. To adopt an open textbook, an instructor simply has to decide which textbook to use and provide access to the textbook for students. Two of the easiest options for providing access are:

• Link to the open textbook on the site where you found it. 
• Download the textbook from the site where you found it, then upload the file to your course in the college's CMS.

Link to an Open Stax textbook

If you find an open textbook to adopt from Open Stax, you can link directly to the View Online version of the textbook.

Prealgebra https://cnx.org/contents/yqV9q0HH@9.763:plLt9FYr@4/Introduction

There are also direct URLs to chapters within the textbook. If you wanted to break up the reading in your CMS and point students directly to a specific chapter, simply navigate to that chapter and copy/paste the URL from the browser bar.

"Chapter 3: Introduction to Integers" https://cnx.org/contents/yqV9q0HH@9.763:NuOkW-Ig@3/Introduction-to-Integers

Link to an Open Textbook Library textbook

If you find an open textbook to adopt from the Open Textbook Library, select the "Read this book" option and link to the homepage for that text. This page has a "Read" button for students to read the text online, and several download options in different formats.

Principles of Management http://open.lib.umn.edu/principlesmanagement/​

There are also direct URLs to chapters within the textbook. If you wanted to break up the reading in your CMS and point students directly to a specific chapter, simply navigate to that chapter and copy/paste the URL from the browser bar.

"Chapter 8: Organizational Culture" http://open.lib.umn.edu/principlesmanagement/chapter/8-1-organizational-culture/

Upload an open textbook to your course

Because open textbooks can be modified and redistributed in any format, you can download an open textbook in a variety of formats, make changes if you wish, and then upload the file to your course CMS in any format or provide a printed version to students.

Open textbooks may be available in the following file types, depending on the textbook:

• PDF (the most common file type available)
• Word doc
• EPUB - standard eBook file type for many eBook readers and mobile devices; can be read on Nook and Kobo, and on desktops using Adobe Digital Editions, EPUB File Reader and other programs
• MOBI - file type used by Amazon Kindle
• WXR - Pressbooks file type (based on the WordPress authoring platform)

Adding an Open Textbook to WebStudy

If you want to upload your open textbook to WebStudy so that students do not have to leave the system to access it, you can simply add the open textbook file (most likely the PDF) as a Material in WebStudy. In the first Timeline session, add the open textbook material to the session to make it available to students. 

You can also modify the open textbook by saving individual chapters as their own files and uploading each chapter individually to the Timeline entry when you want students to read it. You will need to upload each chapter file to the Materials section of your course, then add the specific chapter for a Timeline session as a Material in that session. In this example, you can see the Material "Chapter 5: Fact-Checking Sites" in the Session Coursework section below the Timeline information.