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A comment on Open Textbook Initiative. Parent comment

Re:Open Textbook Initiative by rplnt on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @07:12AM (#30271740)
> Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

So it's the schools that are in on it and the primary target to put blame on. My university (in eastern EU) had majority of textbooks available for free. We could print them ourselves, have them printed at school, or just buy used. I'm sure it wasn't the case for all curriculums, but probably for many. Writing textbooks is one of the things teachers (professors) do after all.

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Re:Open Textbook Initiative by netizen-936824 on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @07:32AM (#30271871)
Some instructors are beginning to use more Open Educational Resources (OER) such as open access online textbooks (OpenStax) in their courses.

Huge props to them and I hope more do this, but we also need to recognise that most OER today serves the basic classes that more people will take.

Its when you get into the higher level, more specific courses where OER is currently under-serving. OER for most of these courses just plain don't exist, I hope someone figures out a way to serve these student and instructors in the near future.

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Re:Open Textbook Initiative by fractal618 on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @12:46PM (#30275587)
I' surprised more people don't know about OpenStax. It's an amazing project
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