[danielford]

I teach biology at a community college and most of the services listed in that article wouldn't improve my courses. I've already switched three of my four courses over to open textbooks, which students can download for free or purchase for the cost of printing. I use Openstax for these.

https://openstax.org/subjects

For the online learning software, I've also dumped the publisher products and switched to the free spaced-repetition software Memrise.

I think most of my colleagues will be moved over to open educational resources within fifteen years, and I'm not sure there's long-term profit to be made in this market.

[aphextron]

>I think most of my colleagues will be moved over to open educational resources within fifteen years, and I'm not sure there's long-term profit to be made in this market.

As a student, I'm not sure I agree with this. I think there's a lot of value in having a really well laid out, well designed textbook with good examples and illustrations. Especially in lower division classes where you end up mostly teaching yourself the material from the text anyways. Most of the open courseware I've had to deal with in classes was extremely sub par compared to actual textbooks.

I think if someone could create textbooks at the quality of Pearson in the range of $20-$50 instead of $100-$200, I would be happy to pay for better materials.

[cpursley]

Check out https://cogenteducation.com/products when you have a chance. We make interactive case studies for biology that go much further than any textbook, digital or otherwise.

We have a free trial: https://cogenteducation.com/trial

full disclosure: I'm a developer there

[prdonahue]

> I think most of my colleagues will be moved over to open educational resources within fifteen years, and I'm not sure there's long-term profit to be made in this market.

Sounds like he's looking for a free solution, not trialware.

[javajosh]

"Interactive case studies" is a value-add that might be worth paying for.

[cpursley]

Yeah, that's why I threw this out there. Our cases are intended to supplement a textbook, not replace it.

[gravypod]

What will you be paying with after your 5 to 30k/year tuition? You can't bleed a stone.

[cpursley]

I agree. It's rare for a teacher to pay for our cases out of their own pocket; it's generally the school system who purchases a package out of their yearly budget.