This article is part of the Professional Advancement Series: Massive Open Online Content Resources
College textbook costs are high. The Maryland Open Source Textbook (MOST) Initiative (see figure) looks to reduce those expenses, but will it be enough? Being an engineer and programmer with a bit of web experience, I think it’s a valiant effort—but one that will fall short unless the delivery mechanism changes.
MOST was started back in 2013 as collaboration between the University System of Maryland Student Council (USMSC) and the System’s Center for Academic Innovation (CAI). The latest news from them is the announcement of a MOST mini-grant program that provides monetary support for generating open-source content. The mini-grants are a couple thousand dollars and only provide an incentive to increase adoption in “high impact, high enrollment courses for which high-quality OER already exists.”