I am interested in finding a textbook replacement for the fundamentals of communication course I teach. I am not aware of a currently-available, quality open source book or even that much quality open source materiala for communication. Finding/creating/adapting suitable material is going to be a long process, so I also want to explore some smaller goals.
I am motivated to explore OER and textbook replacements because of textbook costs and the impact these costs have on my students’ ability to achieve their educational goals.
If I were to dream big about OER, I would love to have a 15-chapter textbook that was approved by an academic communication association like the National Communication Association. It would be ideal if this hypothetical book were created through crowd-sourcing the best ideas from many expert faculty across the globe.
I am trying to decide what might be some first steps toward this goal. A smaller goal might be to find/create/adapt enough quality material to allow students to purchase a cheaper custom version of an existing textbook by replacing some portions. This goal will also probably need to be done a little bit at a time.
OER at Kirkwood: Faculty Adoption Program 
Tony – I definitely think it’s okay to think big at this point. You never know what you might find! I’ve been seeing more and more of what are essentially crowd sourced textbook replacements, all of them with faculty contributors. Searching words like “wiki” along with your subject (communications, speech, etc.) might get some good results.