College Open Textbooks (COT)

About the COT
College Open Textbooks (COT) performs a number of functions in support of the open textbook movement. A primary goal is to make open textbooks easier to locate by assembling a list or catalog of currently available textbooks. You will use this catalog extensively in Finding and Selecting Open Textbooks.

But listing textbooks is not all the collaborative does. Its site and professional networking pages accomplish other goals and activties:

Explain
One of the jobs of the collaborative is to explain the terms and concepts in this field to instructors and other community college staff who may be involved in the textbook adoption process. Here are some of the ideas that you should master and then help others to understand.
 * The differences between open textbooks, open learning modules, and open courseware
 * What textbook repositories and review sites are

Advocate/Promote
The switch from commercial textbooks (those published and distributed by for-profit firms) to open textbooks is a profound one. It isn't enough to provide information passively to those who seek it out. College Open Textbooks is also actively marketing this idea through
 * Conference Presentations
 * Media Releases
 * Other promotional groups

Review
As you will see in this workshop, COT solicits, trains and encourages textbook reviewers and then publishes the resulting reviews on its web site. COT also links to reviews done through other institutions.

Train
College Open Textbooks offers train-the-trainer courses in three formats to spread the word about how to discover, select, adopt and use open textbooks at the undergraduate/community college level. They are:
 * Semi-asynchronous online workshops like this one
 * Synchronous online online workshops
 * Face-to-face workshops

Collaborate
College Open Textbooks collaborates with other member institutions to make open textbooks more available, easier to locate, and more universally adoptable. In addition, COT provides online professional networking groups for:
 * Accessibility Specialists
 * Instructors
 * Trainers
 * Adopters
 * Authors
 * Reviewers
 * Researchers