Monday, September 10, 2012

Saylor Foundation's $20,000 Open Textbook Challenge

By Vasudev Ram


I had blogged recently about the Saylor Foundation, which offers free online courses in Computer Science and other topics. One advantage of their courses seems to be that you can take them at your own pace, as contrasted to some of the other free online courses which you have to finish in a fixed amount of time - which is the duration of the course.

Today I read about the Saylor Foundation's $20,000 Open Textbook Challenge. This seems like something that may of interest to people who have written textbooks on relevant topics that the Foundation conducts courses on.

Excerpt from the Saylor Foundation's Open Textbook Challenge page:

[ The Saylor Foundation is offering $20,000 for accepted textbooks aligning with eligible Saylor Foundation courses, if the copyright holder will re-license them as CC-BY!

Did you know that, according to the College Board, the average college student at a four-year public school spends over $1,000 for textbooks each year? This means that in just America alone, the total cost for course materials is in the billions of dollars. These high costs are greatly impacting students’ access to education, with 7 of 10 students reporting they’ve not purchased a textbook simply because of its cost.

We need to provide a cost-free alternative, and we need your help doing so. If you know about a textbook that might be eligible for inclusion in one of The Saylor Foundation’s free, online college-level courses, let us know! We are offering potentially millions of dollars in bounties and awards for referrals and submissions that meet our criteria. ]

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

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