Sam Houston State Leading the Way in Free Textbook Adoption | Education & School - Woodlands Online

For more than a decade, the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Sam Houston State University has championed the usage of Open Education Resources (OER) or free open textbooks in their courses, inform Emily Binetti, Associate Director Of Communications at Sam Houston State University.
 

Open textbooks are textbooks that have been published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted and distributed. A large number of these books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality. In particular, the NSF-funded American Institute of Mathematics maintains a list of open textbooks suitable for use in traditional university courses. These books can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost.

At SHSU, several professors have taught sections of College Mathematics, Elementary Functions, Calculus I, II, and III, Discrete Mathematics, Linear Algebra, Introduction to Math Thought, Algebraic Structures, and several graduate, honors, and special topics courses using open materials. Notably, professor of Mathematics Ken Smith designed MATH 1410 Elementary Functions around an open textbook and has taught using these resources for many years...

'MyOpenMath was designed by a mathematician, for mathematicians,' Malandro said. 'It is easy to write questions and assemble assignments in MyOpenMath. It supports everything you would need up through calculus and linear algebra, including graphing and checking for algebraically equivalent answers. There's also a whole community of people from around the world writing and sharing new questions every day that any professor in the system can use for their classes. It's better than any paid online homework system I've tried, and best of all, it's free.'
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Source: Woodlands Online