Anyone, anywhere at any time can thumb through the pages of an open-source textbook developed by experts from the three campuses of the UI.
The introductory textbook, “Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation,” is free for anyone to download from the Internet, copy, distribute or transmit, and it is compatible with any electronic reader.
“Students from all over the world can access this book,” said Jonathan H. Tomkin, the associate director of the School of Earth, Society and Environment, and a co-editor of the textbook’s. “We think this can make an enormous impact.”
He said the textbook is a money-saver for students facing runaway costs and a harbinger for the world of textbook publishing. He said the textbook could be used in conjunction with an online or lecture-hall class.
“Students today are used to textbooks made of paper, but that may not always be the case,” he said.
And, being online, the textbook can be almost instantly updated by its authors.
“It can be constantly revised,” Tomkin said. “If there’s a natural disaster, we can easily incorporate that in the book with an update.”
Faculty members were assigned specific chapter topics, a process that started in the 2010-11 academic year.
The end result was a “broad interest” textbook totaling 560 pages and digestible by students from “any walk of life.” The textbook has 11 chapters, each featuring four to five modules on topics including climate and global change, environmental and resource economics, problem-solving, metrics and tools for sustainability, sustainability planning and infrastructure, and the ethics, culture and history of sustainability.
The book includes “essential concepts” from the fields of engineering and applied arts, natural and social sciences, and the humanities.
Tomkin said the comprehensive textbook, the university’s first open-source endeavor, was surprisingly easy to put together.
“It was a bit of an experiment, but we approached it systematically,” he said. “There was a lot of communication, especially at the beginning. We were able to write every chapter with an expert.”
Tomkin said he will soon teach an online course using the textbook, which will include the use of interactive quizzes. He said he expects the course to evolve as he refines the process.
“There are only a handful of institutions that have attempted this,” he said. “I’ve already learned a lot. I expect to learn more.”
Funding for the project came in the form of a $150,000 U.S. Department of Education grant, secured by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
The UI Open Source Textbook Initiative is led by university administration with cooperation from the department of natural resources and environmental sciences, Urbana; the Institute for Environmental Science and Police, UIC; and the department of environmental studies, UIS.
The open-source textbook, co-edited by UIC’s Thomas Theis, the director of the Institute for Environmental Science and Policy, is available through the Rice University-sponsored Connexions website.
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