Pilot scheme gives students the chance to benefit from free e-books and resources
Jisc and Kortext, the student learning content and engagement platform, have partnered to provide 10,000 free e-books and academic publications to all FE and sixth form colleges across the UK.
In a 12-month pilot scheme, the Kortext Open Resources Collection – a curated collection of open access (OA) books and open educational resources (OERs) – will be available to all Jisc FE member institutions. This means that the UK’s 2 million plus FE learners will have free and fair access to these resources, which support a range of subjects from arts, business, and environment information technology and English literature.
James Gray, CEO Kortext said:
“With Jisc and Kortext joining forces, students will have free and easy access to important resources at the point of study, helping them develop their critical minds in preparation for higher education or employment. The more these resources are adopted by academics, the less students have to worry about paying for course content, which we hope will make a big difference to some of these young people’s lives.
“The materials are available now for colleges to integrate into their resource lists, enabling students to access them anytime, anywhere on any mobile, tablet or laptop.”
Liam Earney, Jisc's executive director, digital resources, said:
“Jisc has pledged to help students and teachers across UK higher and further education to gain access to affordable e-books, e-textbooks and related teaching content. This pilot represents a first step to moving towards a more equitable and affordable market for learning content and provides us with an opportunity to monitor how this broad range of content is received and used by both staff and students and help us identify areas for growth.
“Maximising on freely available content can be challenging. Bringing it together into subject collections and with the capabilities of the Kortext platform, students and educators will easily be able to find content of relevance to their courses and understand its use.
“We will continue work with Kortext to ensure the offer evolves – responding to sector need and member feedback as we look at next steps.”