User:Bee800/Open Textbook

Projects and Initiatives
There are a number of open textbook initiatives and projects around the world.

Australian Open Textbook Project

The Australian Open Textbook Project is investigating the current and potential role of open textbooks in Australian higher education. The project has a particular focus on social justice and is funded by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE).

BCcampus

BCcampus supports online college and university education in British Columbia (BC), Canada. In 2012 BCcampus was awarded the first in a series of provincial funds from the BC Ministry of Advanced Education to support the use and development of open textbooks in British Columbia, including the creation of open textbooks in popular subjects. BCcampus provides a library of curated open textbooks and extensive support for open textbook development.

Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D)
The DOT4D project is based at The University of Cape Town and funded by the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The project focuses on supporting the use of open textbook use in South African higher education. DOT4D has a particular focus on social justice.

eCampus Ontario
eCampus Ontario is a Canadian non-governmental organisation (NGO). It supports the use of OER and partners with higher education institutions to support the development of open textbooks. eCampus Ontario also provide a curated collection of OER, including open textbooks.

OpenStax
OpenStax (formerly Connexions and OpenStax College) was founded in 2011 and is based at Rice University. As at June 2021 OpenStax provided 61 openly licensed, curriculum aligned textbooks for universities, colleges and high schools, largely available in US English but with some textbooks available in Polish. OpenStax has charitable status and is funded from a variety of sources, including foundation funding. During 2019 it was reported that OpenStax materials were being used by half of all higher education institutions in the United States.

Open Education Network

The Open Education Network (formerly the Open Textbook Network) is based at The University of Minnesota. A membership organisation, The Open Education Network supports the use of OER in Higher Education. The associated Open Textbook Library had curated 886 open textbooks for reuse as at June 2021.

Polish Coalition for Open Education (KOED) and the Polish Government
The KOED advocates for the use of OER in Poland. The work of KOED informed the Polish Government investment in open textbooks for use in primary and secondary education during 2012 and 2013. A range of open textbooks have been developed and made available.

Siyavula
Based in South Africa, Siyavula was founded in 2007 and offers high school maths and science open textbooks. Initially funded through a Shuttleworth Foundation fellowship, the South African government provided 2.5 million print copies of Siyavula textbooks to South African high school students during 2012.

UK Open Textbooks Project

The Hewlett Foundation funded UK Open Textbooks project (2017-2018) was a collaborative pilot project investigating the applicability of two methods of open textbook adoption to the UK context.