Originally posted by Derrick Cheung on September 23, 2019
OpenStax, a non-profit initiative, spearheaded by Rice University to make education more accessible regardless of household income, is an open educational repository of high quality, peer-reviewed textbooks, available to everyone, students and instructors included, for free. After browsing through a few science textbooks, it’s quality of these books become clear, especially in comparison to a few other open educational textbook resources; in addition to the content, they also include chapter summaries, and a variety of practice questions, key terms lists, and an abundance of figures. For students, solution manuals to the practice questions is included for free. For instructors with a .edu email, assessment banks, PowerPoint slides, detailed solutions, and other community-sourced resources are available, also for free.
Another way OpenStax tries to improve access to higher education is through file/device accessibility. Not only are the textbooks are available to read on an internet browser, but PDF, iBooks, and Kindle versions are also available. Print copies are also available for order; this option does cost money, but for a fraction of the cost of a traditional university textbook. For mobile smartphone users, there are also Android/iOS apps available. However, it does require the user to search for their school name before access is given, and the app is a bit unstable on my device.
Currently, most of the textbook offerings are for introductory first-year courses or AP courses. Hopefully more will be added in the coming years.
In addition to what Derrick Cheung reviewed above, the 2020 Creator Fest, an annual hack-a-thon conference hosted by Openstax, was fully online in 2020 due to the pandemic, and all 6 webinar workshops are available for viewing, and some have posted or promised to post the accompanying PowerPoints. https://openstax.org/creator-fest/speakers
Derrick’s assessment of the OERs is correct in that most texts are introductory level, as it does not appear more advanced level texts have been added. But this site as an OER site shows promise and that it is being further developed.