Create or use open textbooks

Open book icon Open textbooks are a type of open educational resource (OER) that are free for everyone to use. Open textbooks provide an alternative to commercial textbooks and offer many benefits to you, your students and the community. Find out how you can author, adapt or adopt open textbooks.

Author an open textbook

Open Textbooks @ UQ, on the Pressbooks platform, enables you to author a new open textbook or adapt an existing open textbook for your course. You can:

tailor content to enhance deeper learning and engagement.
add local context, Indigenous perspectives and a diversity of viewpoints.
update your textbook immediately and easily.
add rich multimedia and interactivity.
co-create content with your students.

Visit the Open Textbooks @ UQ catalogue to find open textbooks by UQ authors.

Submit an expression of interest form to use Pressbooks to create an open book.

Adopt an open textbook

Find open textbooks to use in your course. Open textbooks and other OER usually have Creative Commons licences that allow others to freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them.

Benefits for your students:

Free access to the open textbook. The cost of textbooks can be a barrier to student success.
No limitations on access. This can be of particular concern during assessment time.
An increased sense of belonging due to the inclusion of local context and a diversity of viewpoints.

Find other types of OER, including images, software, audio, video and whole courses.

Open Textbook Grant Program

Apply for a grant to create an open textbook

There are two types of grants available:

Substantially adapt an existing open textbook to your instructional needs – $2,000
Create an open textbook to replace a commercially published textbook for your course – $4,000.

Associate Professor Jane Johnston in Breaking Ground with Public Interest Communication:

l love the platform for Pressbooks! It was an interesting and rewarding challenge. Written in the Creative Commons, access to the book is completely free - consistent with what the public interest is all about.

A/Prof Johnston and Dr Robyn Gulliver are the authors of Public Interest Communication.

Dr Adriana Diaz in the Pressbooks blog on choosing OER versus another method of book publishing:

To ensure equitable and sustainable access to our learning resources and increase the level of representation in the curation of themes, images, authentic audio, and video material as well as citation practices.

Dr Diaz is the author of JUNTXS and +JUNTXS

Dr Emma Beckman on creating an open textbook for use in her course:

It's really exciting to be able to share a resource that uses video to help complement common paper texts. Photos are great, but there’s so much value in a video version of exercises to help students learn.

Dr Beckman and Chloe Salisbury are the authors of Exercise Delivery.

UQ students on Public Interest Communication:

The updated concepts and theories in the new Pressbook as the pinnacle of resource and information and interest for this course was so incredible.

I really liked the Pressbook, I think this gave really clear and interesting insights into each topic.

UQ student on JUNTXS:

What I particularly liked about the ‘Juntxs’ platform, was that I could use it as a prompt to dedicate more time to my Spanish learning outside of the classroom, without the additional pressure of a deadline. It felt more like an exploration of the language on my own terms, and I appreciated how the content used addressed pertinent issues of our generation.

Public Interest Communication by Jane Johnston and Robyn Gulliver.

Bringing together aspects of ethics, social and civil responsibility, advocacy and publics, this introductory textbook provides a new approach to communication theory and practice in the post truth era.

JUNTXS by Adriana Diaz.

JUNTXS is an open access educational resource which can be used in conjunction with a variety of approaches to support beginning learners of Spanish.

Exercise Delivery by Emma Beckman and Chloe Salisbury.

Exercise Delivery is a valuable resource for students studying to be an exercise professional, particularly for exercise science and exercise physiology.