Affordable Textbooks and Open Educational Resources: Choosing Open Educational Resources
This guide provides an introduction to open educational resources and open textbooks, that might be used as an alternative to expensive, commercially produced, textbooks.
The criteria used to evaluate and select open educational resources and textbooks should be almost the same as for traditional textbooks. The following resources can provide useful information to evaluate open textbooks for possible course adoption.
This open book from Iowa State University provides information on creating and using open textbooks. The five sections in the book are: Getting Started, Copyright, Finding OER, Teaching with OER, and Creating OER.
Altman, William S., Kristen Ericksen, and Judith B. Pena-Shaff. An Inclusive Process for Departmental Textbook Selection. Teaching Of Psychology 33, no. 4, p. 228-231. This article discusses a process for selecting a textbook for lower level Psychology courses, but the questions they ask could be useful when evaluating open textbooks or resources for a class.
The American Institute of Mathematics, which actually has developed a list of approved open mathematics textbooks, has also posted the criteria that they use to evaluate open textbooks.
This website from Achieve.org provides a rubric to help schools choose open educational resources for their school system. Some of the items in the rubric could be applied to choosing open educational resources and textbooks for a college course.
