In their comprehensive reviews of existing open textbooks, American higher education faculty and instructors provide evaluative insights into the strengths, weaknesses, curricular alignment, affordances, and limitations of individual, openly-licensed textbooks (“open textbooks”). Reviewers also share suggestions for improving the open textbook in order to benefit students and instructors; describe how they might use the open textbook with students in specific course contexts; compare the open textbook to its commercial counterparts; and offer broader perspectives on open educational resources in higher education. In this presentation, we will explore findings from our recent, qualitative analysis of 963 reviews of open textbooks. Faculty and instructors who are affiliated with American colleges and universities authored these reviews. This work was in association with their participation in educational workshops about open educational resources, were facilitated by the Open Textbook Network. The reviews carry a CC-BY license and are openly accessible alongside the descriptive open textbook records that comprise the Network’s searchable Open Textbook Library. Reviewers followed a standard review format, wherein they addressed the comprehensiveness, accuracy, relevance and longevity, clarity, consistency, modularity, organization, interface, grammar, and cultural relevance of the open textbooks. Through our presentation of our research findings, participants will have the opportunity to consider how reviews of open textbooks may be especially informative for open textbook authors and publishers. Participants will also be able to reflect on why and how open textbook reviews may be of value and interest to students, instructional designers, librarians, academic staff, higher education administrators, and other individuals who support or have an interest in faculty and instructors’ exploration and adoption of open educational resources. We will close this presentation with brief discussion, inviting attendees to share their perspectives on the ways in which open textbook reviews may be of value to them and to their higher education communities.
