TY - GEN
T1 - A Review of Open Access Textbook Platforms
AU - Cheung, Simon K.S.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Open educational resources or OER have been gradually evolved as a major source of learning materials. As one form of OER, open access textbooks can be used as official textbooks for classroom-based learning as well as online learning and distance learning. Through a review of six open access textbook platforms, this paper investigates the operation model of open access textbooks, including their set-up, sourcing and updating of contents, open licenses, usages, review and quality assurance. It is revealed that open access textbook platforms were usually initiated by universities and non-profit organizations, partnering with philanthropic foundations and government bodies. The 5Rs (retain, re-use, revise, re-mix and re-distribute) provision via open licenses is the distinguished advantage of open access textbooks, especially in enabling adaptation to cater for specific teaching and learning needs. Peer review is the common practices for ensuring the quality of textbooks. It is evidenced that open access textbooks together with other forms of OER have successfully driven the effective sharing of educational resources to make education well accessible to all.
AB - Open educational resources or OER have been gradually evolved as a major source of learning materials. As one form of OER, open access textbooks can be used as official textbooks for classroom-based learning as well as online learning and distance learning. Through a review of six open access textbook platforms, this paper investigates the operation model of open access textbooks, including their set-up, sourcing and updating of contents, open licenses, usages, review and quality assurance. It is revealed that open access textbook platforms were usually initiated by universities and non-profit organizations, partnering with philanthropic foundations and government bodies. The 5Rs (retain, re-use, revise, re-mix and re-distribute) provision via open licenses is the distinguished advantage of open access textbooks, especially in enabling adaptation to cater for specific teaching and learning needs. Peer review is the common practices for ensuring the quality of textbooks. It is evidenced that open access textbooks together with other forms of OER have successfully driven the effective sharing of educational resources to make education well accessible to all.
KW - Learning materials
KW - Open access textbooks
KW - Open educational resources
KW - Open licenses
KW - Textbooks
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089227585&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-51968-1_10
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-51968-1_10
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85089227585
SN - 9783030519674
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 114
EP - 125
BT - Blended Learning. Education in a Smart Learning Environment - 13th International Conference, ICBL 2020, Proceedings
A2 - Cheung, Simon K.S.
A2 - Li, Richard
A2 - Phusavat, Kongkiti
A2 - Paoprasert, Naraphorn
A2 - Kwok, Lam-For
T2 - 13th International Conference on Blended Learning, ICBL 2020
Y2 - 24 August 2020 through 27 August 2020
ER -