Open-Source History Textbook

Curatorial note from Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: In order to provide flexibility for his teaching, and to save his students money, Friedman adopted the OpenStax U.S. History textbook. Open textbooks, often licensed in a way that allows for revision and remixing, represent a part of the broader open educational resource movement, which envisions a universe of freely available modules that can be mixed and matched to suit the needs of a course and its students. They deliver savings to students, flexibility to instructors, and the chance to reclaim control over a portion of the academic publishing universe. While creating an open textbook is an example on the “large” scale, requiring a significant investment of time, it is an increasingly relevant model that many institutions are trying to support in their efforts to shift the dial in the direction of a more open universe of educational resources, and to control costs for students