We have received a second two-year grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, leaders in philanthropic support for education, environment, and global development.
The US$700,000 grant will help us continue our work in the collaborative creation and publication of open educational resources (OER). The funding also supports the growth of open textbook adoption and adaptation, software infrastructure development, and new initiatives to expand our efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion. We received a previous grant from Hewlett in July 2016, in the amount of US$500,000, which funded our first two years of operations. This included prototype development of an OER project management and publishing platform, as well as the launch of twenty open textbook pilot projects.
Numerous open textbooks have now been released with support from the Rebus Community, including Blueprint for Success in College and Career and Antología abierta de literatura hispana. Others, such as LGBTQ+ Studies: a primer and Marking OER Courses: Best Practices and Case Studies are at various stages of scoping, writing, editing, beta-testing, and production. The complete list of books that have been released is on the Community website.
In working to build an open publishing ecosystem, we bring together those who believe in the value of collectively created, fully shareable, and freely adaptable knowledge. It is a large community, including textbook writers, editors, and reviewers, software developers and collaborators, academic librarians, teachers and students, as well as many others. Together, and with our tools, processes, and shared motivations, we hope to help this network become mutually sustaining. We always want to be a part of the ecosystem, but our goal is to catalyze it, not to govern it.