Open textbooks: Engaging education stakeholders to share learning resources

Open textbooks are by nature open education resources, which offer definite advantages over traditional printed textbooks, not only on content development and on subsequent revisions and updates but also in accommodating the students' learning differences. For successful development of open textbooks, a number of challenges had to be overcome, such as soliciting contributors of contents, assuring the quality, and establishing a culture of sharing educational resources. We propose a solution which includes four components: (1) platform for hosting the open textbooks; (2) textbook contents; (3) scheme for assuring the quality of textbooks; and (4) component is the support for continuous cultural building and capacity building. It is believed that open textbooks would effectively resolve the issues of high price and frequent revisions of textbooks, while offering many pedagogical advantages. Strategies for the sustainable development of open textbooks are also discussed.