U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Al Franken (D-MN) and Angus King (I-ME) introduced legislation October 8, 2015, the Affordable Textbook Grant, to support the creation of shareable textbooks for higher education. In the House of Representatives, U.S. Representatives Rubén Hinojosa (D-TX) and Jared Polis (D-CO) introduced legislation in the House. A post on Senator Durbin’s blog at http://go.hawaii.edu/Hz provides more information about the proposed legislation.
The book noted by Senator Durbin in the post as an exemplar of open textbooks is Sustainability: a comprehensive foundation by Tom Theis and Jonathan Tomkin of the University of Illinois. The book has been used by more than 60,000 students in MOOCs and in traditionally delivered courses. The legislation proposes competitive grants to support faculty in creating open educational resources.
