As part of an initiative to reduce the costs of attendance for Portland State students, PSU Library is funding a new round of open textbooks. We invite PSU faculty to submit proposals for textbooks that will be free to students. These open textbooks can include a range of source materials, including open educational resources (OERs).
We do not require faculty to author the entire text.
Proposals are now due May 18, 2015.
This open textbook project draws upon the success of PDX Open, a reTHINK PSU initiative. As part of PDX Open, the Library published five faculty-authored textbooks using a range of source material.
Here are some ideas to help you generate your textbook proposal:
Use OERs and Creative Commons
Build upon the work of others with open educational resources that use a Creative Commons license. This was the strategy of PSU faculty Yiping Fang, Vivek Shandas, and Eugenio Arriaga Cordero for their PDX Open textbook Spatial Thinking in Planning Practice: An Introduction to GIS. The authors revised and remixed the most relevant content from the OER textbook GIS Commons to create a custom textbook for their students.
See the Library’s guide to finding OERs.
Collaborate with faculty authors outside of PSU
Samuel Sennott and Sheldon Loman of PSU co-authored their PDX Open textbook, Comprehensive Individualized Curriculum and Instructional Design, with colleagues from other universities, to share the work and to create a text used at a range of institutions.
Record audio or video
Emiko Konomi recorded audio files for her PDX Open project, Preadvanced Japanese, and Jason Gary Damron and Vicki Reitenauer’s textbook Gender and Sexualities: An Inquiry includes a recording of a discussion between the two authors.
Use library resources
Gender and Sexualities: An Inquiry incorporates several PSU Library-licensed articles and other resources.
For more information:
You may also contact Digital Initiatives Coordinator Karen Bjork at pdxscholar@pdx.edu or (503) 725-5889.