1.1: The LibreTexts Advantage- Components, Curriculum and Cost

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The LibreTexts Advantage: Components

LibreTexts is dedicated to providing what you need for your students and your curriculum and to do so in a way that makes it simple (or as simple as possible) for instructors and students to use them. LibreTexts has built an ecology of components including textbooks both online and printed but also assessment, project management, and software for curation and correction. These are coherently designed with a rich set of training resources. Those new to the system can rapidly build OER to support their curricula and students using LibreTexts' drag and drop remixer. Today there are over 2500 textbooks in LibreTexts' libraries, with more than 500,000 pages that can be remixed. About half of this is held in a central store and the other half in campus branded bookshelves. The books can be edited to incorporate new material and changed when needed. Project management software is available to coordinate building OER with teams. An accessibility checker is built into the text editor. Once finished the project management app holds peer reviews, adoption reports and supplementary materials such as slide decks. The ADAPT online homework system includes a learning analytics dashboard which is integrated into our project management app. Questions can be embedded in the texts or used as summative tests. A cell phone clicker app will is be available

The LibreTexts Advantage: Curriculum

Teaching your course with their textbook can be an exercise in frustration both for you and your students and this is almost as true for most OER as for commercially published books. When Bay View Analytics asked instructors how they taught from the book, the answer was "not really". We all skip chapters, teach in different order, add or substitute materials, and, of course, printed books have errors and inaccuracies. Textbooks are never a perfect match to your students and your curriculum. Worse both the students and curriculum can change from year to year.

Figure $\PageIndex{1}$: How faculty use OER and Commercial Textbooks (CC-BY; Bay View Analytics)

OER provides the toolbox for modernizing higher education, but curriculum improvements provide the design. LibreTexts' strength is its versatility, the ability to break free of the table of contents straight jacket, the ability to bring in new educational tools and the ability to change on the fly, adapting to your students' needs. LibreTexts' design makes it simple for instructors to build their own courseware, either by mapping components created by others or writing their own. LibreTexts has evolved into a learning environment coordinating textbook libraries, a homework system, classroom response software and more to provide an open, online educational system suited to the students and faculty of today. New content can be added and old content edited wherever desired. Textbooks can be built de novo, by rapidly combining pages and chapters from other Libretexts books. Any open resource can be brought into LibreTexts and we have teams of students who can help.

The LibreTexts Advantage: Cost

While textbook cost was, and remains a driver for OER adoption the leveling off seen after 2018 is deceiving. Today, the net cost of learning materials includes expensive, online homework systems and other charges to students such as inclusive/equitable access programs. LibreTexts books are free for all to read and for instructors to build.

Figure $\PageIndex{1}$: Relative price changes in the current century until February 2024 for college textbooks and other services using Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

We ask that institutions with more than five LibreTexts books join our Network to maintain the project. The cost is $1500/yr. The online homework system, ADAPT, has a cost free question bank section, and a part for marking and grading student answers which charges $15/student or $10/student for Network members. Discounts are available for institutional payment.

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