Creating an Open Textbook on Linear Algebra

In 2021, the interfaculty teaching staff for Mathematics education started a project to write and publish a new textbook on Linear Algebra, to be used everywhere on campus. Early on they decided that the most effective way to do this would be to publish it as an open textbook, so it becomes easy to access, to work on, to reuse by others and to become available all over the world. Today, they want to share their journey so far.

Creating an interactive, open book on linear algebra, why would one do that?

To answer this question, let’s sketch the situation of a typical engineering student at TU Delft: 

This student follows at least one course in linear algebra in their first year, first semester. Linear algebra is not their main topic, but it is necessary to understand and solve the engineering problems in their field. For that is what engineering students – amongst other things – do: translate problems to mathematical models, to solve and later translate them back to the original situation, processing and interpreting the results.

This student buys a big book - or does not buy the big book because they heard it will not be used integrally. Moreover, books are expensive - attends lectures and reads announcements on Brightspace, where they can also find interactive exercises using Grasple, pre-lecture videos and applets to practice. 
That is a lot of different sources, platforms, and pop-up windows.

This situation does not necessarily need to be a problem. But wouldn’t it be better if students could find all this material in one place, where theory, exercises and additional information seamlessly connect? 

If we want to answer our initial question, we should also ask our teaching staff.

For them, it is a constant challenge to find the right theory, exercises and applets and align them to offer students a learning experience that applies to their context. New versions of books are published regularly, resulting in additional workload to adjust the instruction. And then there are students who come to class without having the book, because it is too expensive. 

What if we could make an open book including all the possibilities that exist nowadays (interactive exercises, videos, applets)?

An open book allows lecturers to adjust the content themselves, to update the book according to current developments, their student’s needs and experiences. Making education more accessible, flexible, and inclusive, not only for our students at TU Delft, but also far beyond.

That is why in 2021 our interfaculty mathematics education team started an adventure. An adventure to develop an interactive, open textbook on linear algebra for engineers. It has already proven to be challenging to produce such an ambitious and potentially impactful work with so many people involved. For Open Education Week, we want to share our challenges, because we want others across campus to be able to learn from our process.

Challenges

Of course, our main job is to teach students. We know how to explain linear algebra. But we are not a publisher. This led to several challenges in the process: 

• With a team of 11 math lecturers offering courses at different faculties across the university, finding a way to work together is not the easiest thing to do.
• We had to figure out our process of writing a book. Where to start? How to protect the quality of what we write? How to create one style throughout the book when several people write different parts of the book?
• We had to decide what content we would cover and how to explain the different topics. What do we include or exclude, how to prioritise?
• We had to agree on standards, such as mathematical notation. 
• We had to decide if we would offer a printed version of the book (answer: yes)
• We had to find and choose a platform to write and publish the book with. 
• Last but not least, we had to find a way to balance all our efforts for the book with our teaching duties. 

This everlasting challenge of finding time on top of teaching obligations is not easy, even more in current times where developments in society press so much on the resilience and flexibility of teaching staff and students in general.

Thankfully, our team was and still is very motivated to offer a better, more flexible, and cheaper solution to the commercial books and other sources now used. We are happy to receive support from the TU Delft Library Open Publishing service and experts from other universities sharing their experiences for us to learn from. 

Currently we are working towards a first pilot with a selection of the book in Q1 of the academic year 2022/2023. We aim to deliver the first full edition in 2023.

For more information about the project, contact the Project Lead Loes van Hove, Education Coordinator DIAM.