Open Source Textbooks

I was part of a course success group which did open source textbook investigations and found many.

I am needing this list again, after four years, so I thought I would post here for anyone who would like to use this.

 

What materials did you find that you would adopt for your courses? 

Steve Poulter’s Framework for Academic Writing http://spoulter6.wixsite.com/frameworks

Frameworks for Academic Writing spoulter6.wixsite.com This book (free) is a step-by-step, sentence-by-sentence guide to persuasive writing, business writing, literary analysis, and personal writing.

A professor’s downloadable book which teaches “writing as a process” and includes worksheets, lists, etc. Includes Persuasive Writing, Business and Professional Writing, Critical Analysis, and Personal Writing. This could be a wonderful source for lit classes, Freshman Comp, and business/technical writing.

 

The Writing Center at UNC-Chapel Hill http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/

Provides links to descriptions of ways to write, grammatical and editing concerns, specific assignments, and writing in different fields. Very helpful. A professor might want to add more to complex ideas, like argumentative writing (adding Toulmin?), but could be a primary source for teaching.

 

Writing @ CSU Open-Access Textbooks http://writing.colostate.edu/textbooks

Most are PDF textbooks that can be downloaded by chapter or in their entirety, which is helpful. Allows for customization. I don’t know that any single book would be perfect, but you could definitely pick and choose different chapters to shape your class. Provides link to Writing Commons as well.

 

Writing Commons http://writingcommons.org/

Content covers all stages of writing process; lots of content to choose from to create a “textbook” for a class, writing for different contexts/disciplines (public speaking, academic writing, creative writing, business writing, STEM). However, it is in blog form, so links would need to be to specific short blogs. Might be a wonderful supplement.

 

Parlor Press textbooks http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/SearchResults.aspx?subjectAreaId=6

Textbooks available as free .pdf downloads or can be read on screen. However, only a few that relate to composition classes: only two seem appropriate for EN101 and two seem useable by EN300 students, but maybe only the upper 50 percentile – it’s pretty advanced.

 

Paradigm Online Writing Assistant http://www.powa.org/

Tool with resources focused on specifics of writing, though doesn’t offer answers for questions posed in different sections

 

Could they substitute for materials students must currently buy? 

YES. Definitely. I can also see how I would be able to find whatever I would want to include somewhere on the websites—increasing as more institutes add to open access materials.

 

How do you change your course to accommodate any shifts away from textbooks?

Add references to EXACT website links versus page numbers.