More college level textbooks on the way

As part of Connexions participation in the College Open Textbook collaborative (COT), two previously copyrighted textbooks are being converted into Connexions frictionless-remix format: Fundamentals of Mathematics by Denny Burzynski and Wade Ellis, and Principles of Microeconomics by Larry Reynolds. Both books serve in the top-30 highest enrolled community college courses and have been recommended by faculty reviewers on the COT website (reviews). They will be available for adoption and adaptation later this year.

Fundamentals of Mathematics is a pre-Algebra basic math textbook that reinforces concepts that some students may never have mastered prior to college, but that are critical for college level math study. The original PDF-only format of the book can be seen here (original PDF-only) and modularized chapters will begin appearing shortly. Bill Buxton (COT), Una Daly (COT) and David Lippman (mathematics faculty at Pierce College) are organizing a group of mathematics faculty that will be included as editors on the book to help keep it fresh and maintained. They would welcome volunteer community college faculty interested in joining as editors. You can help edit a chapter, a few pages, or the whole book, depending on your time and interest. To volunteer, contact Una Daly (UnaDaly at COT ), the Associate Director of the College Open Textbooks collaborative.

Principles of Microeconomics is a basic economics textbook with an extensive set of ancillaries including class slides, excel worksheets with economic models, and homework sets. The author agreed to license his textbook and ancillaries using a CC-BY license. The original material can be found here - original econ textbook. The author, Larry Reynolds plans to be actively involved in the upkeep of his Connexions book and will be trained in Connexions authoring as part of the conversion project.

Connexions content going mobile

This summer Connexions development team is hard at work developing a mobile version for all of the Connexions collections. These new mobile versions will significantly increase access to all content in the repository by providing an easy to use, standards-based, mobile-reader format, called EPUB. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation generously awarded us a specific grant to develop an EPUB export for Connexions content this summer. Students, teachers, and independent learners will have access to Connexions content on their mobile devices this fall.

EPUB is supported by the major mobile devices and e-book readers including Apple's iPad and iPhone, Sony’s eReader, and enTourage’s eDGe. EPUB books can also be read offline on notepads and laptops and the EPUB format is used by accessibility services that enhance content for use by individuals needing assistive technologies for reading. Creating a Connexions EPUB export will provide a complete and robust mobile reading experience for the growing collection of open textbooks and university press publications in Connexions. Students will be able to read their textbooks from anywhere, vastly increasing the marketing, awareness, availability, and use of open textbooks.

When the development is complete we will announce the mobile versions on this blog and at cnx.org.