Ready to be a textbook author? BCcampus is looking for British Columbia faculty who are ready to create open textbooks to round out our list of 40 highest-enrolled subject areas.

In phase one of the project, we harvested a number of existing open textbooks and worked with B.C. post-secondary faculty to review them. The review process enabled us to provide texts for 12 of the top 40 subject areas, with some areas having more than one text.

Phase two of our project, which is still ongoing and overlaps with phase three, involves instructors adapting existing open resources to produce modified open textbooks.

In phase three, we are looking for instructors to create new open textbooks from scratch in areas eligible for funding. These new texts will be produced using only new materials or appropriate openly-licensed content.

“In all phases of this project, we are favouring proposals that involve collaboration between two or more institutions,” said Mary Burgess, BCcampus director of open learning. “Working together with others means more people have a stake in putting out a quality product, and making sure the textbooks actually get assigned in more courses.”

All information for the phase three call for proposals is in the Open Textbook section of the website. Deadline for applications is February 28, 2014 with completed textbooks due by September 5.