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Free Intro Psychology Book Now on Our Website |
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| Posted by: | Ed Diener |
| Title/Position: | Professor Emeritus |
| School/Organization: | University of Illinois |
| Sent to listserv of: | SESP, SPSSI |
| Date posted: | November 8th, 2013 |
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The Diener Education Fund has created an internet site for free college textbooks, and our first text – Introduction to Psychology – is mostly on-line now.
Please forward email to people who teach introduction to psychology or other courses that might use some of the chapters.
The website is: Nobaproject.com
Here are a few facts about the first textbook:
--120 authors (7 winners of the APS William James Award) who are all experts on the chapters they authored. Authors such as Elizabeth Loftus, Henry Roediger, Roy Baumeister, Susan Fiske, and so forth.
--80+ chapters
--11 topic areas in psychology
--4.8 out of a 5.0 average rater satisfaction
--1000’s of instructor, student, and independent users
In a month the entire textbook will be on the site and it is available for free to anyone in the world. Our goal is to create a new model for college textbooks. Here are some reasons professors should adopt the book:
(1) It is free. This makes education more affordable (especially important for the poor and those in the developing world). New texts now are $170 US dollars, and used or rented materials – even e-materials – are still in the $60-90 range! For a very small class size, our book will save the classroom of students $ 3,000 per semester, and for a large class it will save the students over $100,000 per semester! We hope professors will join the movement to make education less expensive for their students. Although professors choose which text to use, it is students who most benefit from the free nature of the e-book.
(2) It is written by experts. Rather than a small number of generalist authors each Noba chapter is written by an expert on that topic.
(3) It is flexible. Instructors can easily choose which chapters they want to teach, place them in any order they like, and easily digitally assign them to students using a passcode.
(4) It is environmentally friendly. As institutions move to more sustainable formats digital materials are increasingly valued.
(5) It is both traditional and cutting-edge. The chapters reflected in the Noba collection represent the standard canon of introduction to psychology courses as well as cutting edge chapters reflecting new trends in science.
(6) It is open and crowd-sourced. Noba is available to anyone to use and to share with others. Noba also continually requests feedback from users to help guide innovations and new topic areas. This helps balance traditional expert offerings with the desires of users to create materials that will be both authoritative and usable.
Please pass along this note and information to individuals who teach related courses.
Thanks,
Ed and Carol Diener and the Noba Project Team
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