How Open Licensing Improved Our Textbook and Our Careers

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Non-Member Cost $25 (Upon payment, click "Return to Text and Academic Authors Association" and you will be able to download teleconference)

Presented by Barbara Illowsky, Professor, Mathematics & Statistics, De Anza Community College, Co-Author of Collaborative Statistics

Barbara Illowsky will present the benefits she and her co-author have received by open licensing their textbook. These include monetary compensation for the copyright, much higher adoption and usage rates, more and better feedback from instructors and students, media and peer recognition, and more. TAA members who attend this presentation will learn about the various open licenses, where and how open-licensed textbooks are hosted, and how to maximize the benefits of open licensing. They will also learn how open licensed textbooks are a win for students, instructors, schools, parents, taxpayers, and many other groups.

Collaborative Statistics by Susan Dean and Barbara Illowsky has been in continuous publication for more than 15 years. It was nominated recently for the TAA McGuffey Longevity Award. In 2008 the copyright was purchased by a foundation and changed from All Rights Reserved to an open Creative Commons license. The textbook is housed at the Rice University Connexions repository. More than 50 instructors have adopted the textbook. Hundreds of students use it each term online, offline, or in bound format. Five derivatives of the textbook have been published on Connexions.

Barbara Illowsky

Dr. Barbara Sack Illowsky is a Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA, where she’s taught for over 20 years. She is co-author of Collaborative Statistics, a formally for-profit text that is now an open educational resource used by over 50 high school, college and university faculty in a variety of disciplines, including statistics. Barbara has also written numerous published articles, mostly on mathematics education and has received several local and state awards for professional and community work. She is currently President of the California Mathematics Council, Community Colleges, the professional organization for mathematics faculty in the northern 58 CA community colleges and was previously statewide Project Director for the California Community Colleges Basic Skills Initiative. Barbara’s husband Dan, an engineer, co-authored five books on computer programming over twenty years ago and then five years ago wrote a Q&A book to help young adults to navigate life.

Please note: Recordings may not be copied, shared, or distributed.