The Saylor Foundation Open Textbook Challenge

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The Saylor Foundation Open Textbook Challenge
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Any professor who has written a textbook knows that it’s usually more a labor of love than a profitable venture.

Yet the average college student at a four-year public school spends over

$1,000 on textbooks every year, according to the College Board. The Saylor Foundation believes these high costs are greatly impacting students’ access to education—with a reported 7 of 10 students who have avoided buying a textbook simply because of its cost.

So they’re offering $20,000 to professors and other textbook rights-holders, in exchange for setting certain textbooks free with a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC-BY) license.

The rest of us can get $250 just for posting a link to the challenge.

» Learn more about the Open Textbook Challenge

 

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Education
Open educational resources
Rebecca Fernandez
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Rebecca Fernandez is a Principal Program Manager at Red Hat, leading projects to help the company scale its open culture. She's an Open Organization Ambassador, contributed to The Open Organization book, and maintains the Open Decision Framework. She is interested in the intersection of open source principles and practices, and how they can transform organizations for the better.
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2 Comments

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Nouhoun Y. Diarra | September 19, 2011
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Hum...that sounds like a good springboard for the development of Open Textbooks. Hopefully professors and other authors will seize the opportunity to increase college students access to textbooks.

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Cathy | September 20, 2011
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My plan would make higher education learning free without the need for technology. Just share textbooks through the local public library.

www.opencourseware.ca

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