Imagine if your textbook included the online homework right in the book. Imagine if this was completely free for you and your students. With PreTeXt and Runestone, this dream can become reality! In this talk we will explore what can be accomplished with these two open source projects, both from a teaching and authoring standpoint.

• Free.

• Almost as good.

Cost is important:

• Students are increasingly being priced out of college.

• Students shouldn’t have to choose between a textbook and food.

• Textbook cost is a social justice issue!

The average student should budget \(\$1240 - \$1400\) for textbooks and course materials (annually).

To cope with the cost:

• Purchase an older edition.

• Delay purchasing the textbook.

• Never purchase the textbook.

• Share the textbook.

• Steal the textbook.

Commercial textbooks come with stuff.

• Homework Systems.

• Canvas Integration.

• Instructor Resources.

...BETTER!

• Publishers need a product they can sell to as many people as possible.

• Textbooks written by faculty for faculty can be opinionated best teaching practices.

• The Goal: Make it easy for faculty to create or adopt OER that is better than the commercial alternative.

• Markup language for scholarly documents.

• Write once. Read anywhere.

• Focus on accessibility.

• It’s actually not that difficult.

• Started as a Computer Science textbook hosting platform.

• Adopted PreTeXt for authoring; now includes math books.

• Demo time!

• Workshop: May 15-16, 2024 at Metro.

• Funding available for Colorado faculty to collaborate on PreTeXt/Runestone textbook projects.

• Please apply!