Back in October 2020, the concept of what eventually became PA-ADOPT was starting to be discussed around West Chester University’s Office of Digital Learning & Innovation (now the Teaching & Learning Center) and the Office of Research & Sponsored Programs. The idea to bring four Pennsylvania state system universities together to apply for a U.S. Department of Education (DOE) grant aimed at creating free and open electronic textbooks was an ambitious one, but having already established an eTextbook program for faculty that had been successfully generating books for four years, we liked our chances.
Fast-forward six years later, we have 22 new eTextbooks from a variety of STEM and Writing fields thanks to the DOE’s Open Textbooks Pilot Program The data collected from these books so far is showing that they’ve had the effect we thought they would: average GPA up, average failure and withdrawal rates down, and hundreds of thousands of dollars saved by the students in the four Pennsylvania universities that used them. Beyond that, these books have been used at over 100 educational institutions around the world, cited in other scholarly works, and have received high marks in reviews from other higher education faculty.
While it had been my hope to find a way to continue and possibly even expand this program after the grant ended in August 2026, I’m sorry to say that the decision has been made to end it. I am extremely proud of everything we have accomplished and will continue to look for ways to help meet the needs of faculty and students by building OER textbooks.
So, what exactly does this mean going forward?
- No new books will be produced by PA-ADOPT.
- The PA-ADOPT web site will remain online for the foreseeable future, continuing to make our existing books available for download.
- While there will no longer be an organized method of supporting our faculty authors, they are free to make updates to their books on their own, and we will continue to be available to provide those updated files on this site.
- Users are welcome to contact us about any issues they’ve encountered with our books, and we will pass those on to the faculty authors, but there is no guarantee that they will be fixed.
My thanks to everyone who has been a part of this program and who has used (and continues to use) our books. It has been an unforgettable and rewarding journey.
Marc Drumm
Principal Investigator, PA-ADOPT