One of the most important uses of Open Education Resources (OERs) at many universities is as a textbook replacement. Several universities have begun offering what some institutions call “z-degrees,” meaning that they require “zero” textbooks. OERs take the place of textbooks. Examples include Tidewater Community College, Northern Virginia Community College, Thomas Edison State College, and the University System of Maryland. Read this blog post from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for more information.
OpenStax College, has gone as far as creating complete textbooks, 19 to date, on a wide variety of college subjects ranging from physics and chemistry to history and psychology. Here is a list of all the books they offer. Each book is downloadable for free in PDF format and carries a CC-BY Creative Commons International 4.0 license. Some universities make arrangements to sell hard copies of the books through their bookstores because there is still a demand for hard copy textbooks (according to recent surveys of students) but students can also read the books on their smartphones (riding the bus to class), on their tablets, or on their laptops. Best of all, the books are free and can save students hundreds of dollars per semester in textbook costs.
Two additional sources of information about free, open textbooks are Flatworld Knowledge and the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources’s listing of open textbooks.
Faculty members: Even if you don’t adopt free textbooks for your courses, why not have your students use them as secondary references? Sometimes reading an explanation about a difficult concept from a different source can help clarify that concept.