Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Open textbook resources

As discussed in the Blueprint, open textbooks have become an important sustainability strategy for the Orange Grove Repository. Here are some resources you might find interesting:

  • Students Retain Information in Print-Like Formats Better.” This article, from The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Wired Campus” website, reports on a study at Arizona State University that found students had lower reading comprehension of scrolling online material than they did of print-like versions. The article links to the entire report: "To Scroll or Not to Scroll: Scrolling, Working Memory Capacity, and Comprehending Complex Texts" Retrieved March 29, 2010, from: http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Students-Retain-Print/22088/?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

  • The Community College Open Textbook Collaborative (http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/) supports a Ning group on Open Textbook Research. If you wish to sign up for free membership, please go to: http://collegeopentextbooks.ning.com/main/authorization/signUp?target=http%3A%2F%2Fcollegeopentextbooks.ning.com%2Fgroup%2Fresearchers

  • This article was posted on CCOTC’s Open Textbook Research Ning network site. Titled: “The Open Revolution: An Environmental Scan of the Open Textbook Landscape,” by Jordan Frith, NC State University, August 10, 2009, it examines several open textbook platforms in depth (Wikibooks, Connexions, Flat World Knowledge, The Global Text Project, and Textbook Media). The author concludes that this movement is dynamic and still evolving. He hopes that “the future of the textbook industry will be one of traditional textbooks competing with open options. Both professors and students will benefit from that competition.” Read the article at: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dspc/opentextbookswhitepaper.pdf