A Shoestring Grassroots Approach to Publishing an Open Educational Resource Engineering Textbook

The lack of affordable and accessible education is one of the major obstacles inhibiting the upward social mobility of New Yorkers from low to middle socioeconomic classes. Students from lower income, underrepresented and first-generation college households in an urban setting, are particularly affected by the rise of higher education costs, which further marginalizes the members of these communities. The availability and adoption of good quality Open Educational Resource (OER) textbooks, has the ability to significantly ease the economic burden on the student population; however, upper level engineering text books, available as OERs, are scarce and vary in quality. This case study presents a grassroots approach for the creation of a Soil Mechanics Engineering Textbook on a shoe string budget. This ongoing work is being done by putting into play an array of interdisciplinary resources, available within the New York City College of Technology and the City University of New York. These include library collaborations, communication design professionals, students, undergraduate research programs, surplus technician funds and professional community goodwill. The result is a well-rounded, visually engaging and appealing, peer reviewed OER textbook, which when published will become available free to any student and faculty member worldwide. This translates to direct savings of approximately $112 per student, at local and/or national higher education institutions that make use of the textbook for their entry level soil mechanics course. The author estimates that when adopted at the New York City College of Technology, the entire cost of publication of the textbook will be recovered through student savings within three semesters, by conservative estimates.