How can you help change the face of education by using an open textbook? Adopting and assigning an open textbook can go a long way toward reducing student costs and increasing access to post-secondary education.

About Open Textbooks in Manitoba

On September 11, 2015, Manitoba’s Minister of Education and Advanced Learning James Allum announced the Manitoba Open Textbook Initiative. The goal of the initiative is to make higher education more accessible by reducing students costs through the use of openly licensed textbooks in Manitoba.

Campus Manitoba and BCcampus have partnered to build a website that allows students and faculty to browse, view, and download open textbooks for use in their courses. The textbooks in our catalogue have all been created, reviewed, or adapted by faculty at post-secondary institutions in British Columbia.

Peer-Reviewed Textbooks Ready for Adoption

Many open textbooks have been created, reviewed, vetted, and adopted by subject matter experts who are already teaching in your discipline. With BCcampus, we’ve identified specific textbooks that have been rated as 4 or higher overall on a 5 point scale. Where appropriate, we have linked to the most recent version of the reviewed textbook. You can read the reviews by following the links. Don’t see a textbook on this list? More open textbooks in a variety of subject areas are in need of reviews and adoptions.

Business, Management, & Leadership

• Mastering Strategic Management
• Introduction to Financial Accounting

Computing & Information Technology

• forall x: An Introduction to Formal Logic
• Algorithms and Data Structure

Environment

• Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation

Humanities

• Writing for Success
• English Literature: Victorians and Moderns
• Nationalism, Self-determination and secession
• Democracy in Brief

Interdisciplinary

• NGO Handbook
• Communication Theory

Mathematics & Statistics

• Calculus – Early Transcendentals
• Introductory Statistics

Sciences

• Anatomy & Physiology
• Organic Chemistry with a Biological Emphasis: Vol I and II
• Concepts of Biology
• College Physics (OpenStax)
• Calculus-Based Physics I

Social Sciences

• Principles of Microeconomics (Saylor)
• Principles of Microeconomics (OpenStax)
• Macroeconomics: Theory through Applications
• Principles of Economics
• Principles of Macroeconomics
• An Introduction to Sociology
• Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World
• Women in the World Today
• Introduction to Psychology: 1st Canadian Edition
• Principles of Social Psychology
• Research Methods in Psychology

Open Textbook Formats

Open textbooks are convenient and accessible because they are available in many electronic formats and can be printed inexpensively.

• Read online — bookmark the URL and read it in your browser.
• Download the PDF, DOC, ePub, or Mobi and read it on your phone, tablet, or ereader.
• Purchase a bound and covered print copy of the text through a printer of your choosing.

Guidelines for Adopting an Open Textbook

Distributing an open textbook to your students is simple. We have a few suggestions to help you decide which way works best for you. For more in-depth information about the process of adopting an open textbook, faculty and instructors may be interested in a free, archived MOOC by BCcampus available at P2PU. The content of this course is available under an open license and includes webinars, discussions, and other valuable resources for finding, using, and adopting open textbooks.

We also recommend reading the BC Open Textbook Adoption Guide, which is available as an ebook.

Why Open Textbooks?

Open textbooks are important to the post-secondary culture in Manitoba because they have the potential to:

• make education more affordable and accessible for students
• improve learning experiences by allowing faculty to customize resources
• create possibilities for sharing, creating, and collaborating to expand knowledge through an open environment

Adopted Open Textbooks

If you or your colleague has already adopted or plan on adopting an open textbook, make sure to tell us about it. Information about faculty adoptions is important to the viability of the open textbook project.

Promote Open Textbooks

Feel free to download, print, and distribute this resource to help raise awareness of open textbooks and the Manitoba project.

• Open Textbook Brochure [PDF]