1. Collaborating to raise
awareness of open
textbooks
1 year pilot project |
Funded by The Hewlett
Foundation
UK OPEN
TEXTBOOKS
"We are currently all writing module descriptors for our new
course validation and guess what? They all have Open Access
Texts in the reading lists!"
(Workshop Participant, Senior Lecturer, Staffordshire)
IntroducingOpen
Textbooks
Replicating OpenStax exhibition and promotion methods
and the Open Textbook Network workshop format to test
applicability in the UK context during Fall 2017 and Spring
2018.
Assessing interest in the use of open textbooks at Higher
Education level.
Focused on STEM subjects.
14 workshops held at 8 institutions
116 participants from UK & Irish
Universities inc. 43 in academic roles
A third of participants completed an
incentivised review
All 13 academic reviewers reported they
will or might adopt an open textbook
UK Higher Education courses often have reading lists rather than
be based around one or two textbooks.
There are substantial differences in UK regional contexts and
policies, including student tuition fee costs.
Currently students studying in England
will graduate with an average of
£50,800 debt (Institute of Fiscal
Studies, 2017)

2. ukopentextbooks.org
@UKOpenTextbooks
This work was created by the UK Open Textbook project in October
2018 and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License.
"I'm going to try to edit the books together to make them more relevant
for my course, and then send them off to the reprographics department
in my college and get them printed there.
I can also potentially make them digitally available to the students."
(FE Lecturer participating in ASE 2018)
7 events across the UK inc. librarian
conferences and FE/Secondary school
events.
85 verified signups to receive more
information about OpenStax
9 known adoptions (as at March 2018)
Showcasing
OpenStax
National level research into student experiences and what impacts, if any, textbook cost
is having on their studies.
More research on how textbooks are being used by educators in different regions, with
different funding and tuition costs, is required.
Potential for developing open textbooks for specialised subjects or in languages such as
Welsh.
Need to develop informed country specific arguments for open textbooks (access,
customisable content and institutional savings rather than student savings, for example).
Recommendations
Although subject dependent, the
National Union of Students
calculated that on average
students should budget to spend
£1070 per annum on books and
materials (NUS, 2010)
81% of UK students think that
textbooks should be provided for free
by their institution (NUS &
CourseSmart Survey, 2012)
During the 2014-5 academic year, students spent a
mean of £572 on books and equipment in their first
year, falling to £465 in year 2 and £490 in year 3
(Student Income & Expenditure Survey, 2018)