Cabrillo

OPENSTAX ONLINE TEXTBOOK REVIEW COLLECTION

In an effort to encourage adoption of open education resources, the Cabrillo College library recently purchased a print set of 20 core open education textbooks from OpenStax, one of the main providers of free peer-produced and peer-reviewed online textbooks. Subjects include biology, history, chemistry, physics, political science, psychology, sociology, and math. These textbooks can be checked out by faculty for one week, and were featured in our fall Faculty newsletter as well as in our fall FLEX open house. We have already had one of our Psychology instructors tell us she is allowing her students to use the OpenStax textbook as an option, and she is considering adopting it for next semester. Also, our new Technology Services librarian, Aloha Sargent, put together an informative LibGuide for faculty to use. (Full disclosure: this was a borrowed idea - a colleague sitting at my table during this year's Deans & Directors Meeting in Sacramento mentioned their purchasing a fairly inexpensive OpenStax "starter set" for their faculty to review, and I really liked the idea!)