Sustaining a Large Scale Open Project: The B.C. Open Textbook Project
Channel: Open Washington SBCTC
Date: 2016-04-08

This segment tells a story of a highly successful Open Textbook project in British Columbia, Canada and how the project sustained momentum and funding. Stacey and Burgess, former and current Directors of Open Education at BCcampus first discuss the history of the Open Texbook Project and illustrate the key elements that influenced the initiative’s early success. One of the key elements they identify is their continuous data collection effort around student access and student affordability. They also discuss the recent growth in the adoption of OER and report that there have been 103 open textbooks in the BC collection. In discussing sustainability and capacity building across the system, they point out that sustainability is not so much about ongoing grant funding but about integrating this into the regular daily operations of an institution and the way faculty and staff work. Then they move to discuss how this regionally funded project by the Ministry of Advanced Education has been widely adopted beyond British Columbia, and how additional partnerships have emerged. Finally, they conclude the session by sharing their tips on how to maintain the academic rigor of the materials they produce, such as their review process that uses same criteria that any textbook would be evaluated against.