‘UCT Open Textbook Journeys’ provides access to locally relevant learning materials

Lecturers at the University of Cape Town (UCT) are adopting innovative pedagogical and content production approaches to provide students with more accessible and locally relevant learning materials. The UCT Open Textbook Journeys monograph tells the stories of 11 open textbook development initiatives engaging with curriculum transformation, open pedagogy, multilingualism and accessibility in order to address social injustice in the classroom.

Authored by Bianca Masuku, Michelle Willmers, Henry Trotter and Glenda Cox of the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D), the monograph contributes towards a better understanding of open textbook production by providing details related to authors’ processes and their reflections on their work. The collection aims to provide rich anecdotal evidence about the factors driving open textbook activity, and sheds light on how to go about conceptualising and producing open textbooks. The project also aims to aid the articulation of emerging open textbook production models that advance social justice in higher education.

The monograph concludes with recommendations to university managers, academics and students that address the sustainability of this work as part of the mainstream academic enterprise. Specifically, these recommendations address the need for institutional support in order to maximise efficiencies across the South African higher education sector, initiate pilot programmes and promote inter-institutional collaboration.

The UCT Open Textbook Journeys monograph is published in collaboration with UCT Libraries on its continental open access platform.

• Access the UCT Open Textbook Journeys monograph online.