Development of an Open Textbook for Engineering Economics

Bradley James Schmid

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Conference: 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual On line
Publication Date: June 22, 2020
Start Date: June 22, 2020
End Date: June 26, 2021
Conference Session: Engineering Economy Division Technical Session 1
Tagged Divisions: Engineering Management, Systems Engineering, Engineering Economy, and Industrial Engineering
Page Count: 6
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--34456
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/34456
Download Count: 540

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Bradley James Schmid University of Saskatchewan

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Brad Schmid is an assistant professor in Civil, Geological, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan.

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Abstract

Engineering Economics is a required course and required for accreditation in most engineering colleges in Canada, the United States, and many other countries. Open textbooks are textbooks that are licensed under an open copyright license and reside in the public domain. These resources are made available for free to students, instructors, and the general public – essentially anyone can access these resources for free. Engineering Economics textbooks from major publishers typically cost students $200 or more to purchase new. The University of Saskatchewan had undertaken a review of their Engineering Economics course; evaluating the method of teaching, the topics covered in the course, and the education resources available. The review highlighted additional topics that should be covered in the course and corresponding gaps in available textbook resources. An opportunity to create an open textbook for the course was pursued to provide a resource to students that was not available. This open textbook focuses on engineering problems and particularly on topics and cases relevant to Canadian Engineers, the Canadian tax system, and includes some topics not typically covered in traditional engineering economics textbooks such as budgeting, cost estimation, and the determination of product costs using principles from management accounting. One of the most beneficial aspects of open textbooks is that others may use the book and modify it for their particular interest or application. In this textbook few sections, mainly related to taxes, would have to be adapted to a particular country to make the textbook applicable to other regions of the world. To facilitate the development of the open textbook, funding was made available to the project that allowed the primary authors to hire two undergraduate students and one graduate student to help in the development of the textbook. These students had previously taken the engineering economics course or were in a graduate program related to economics. This strategy was extremely beneficial to both the instructors as primary authors and the students as contributors. For the student contributors, their work on the open textbook allowed them to more fully understand the course concepts and apply them to examples and cases for the textbook. For the primary authors this work arrangement reduced their workload and provided feedback related to clarity of the explanations and example problems used in the textbook. The results of this work are an open textbook written for the Canadian context, though easily adapted for other regions, that is available to anyone for free. The textbook was written in simple, clear language; avoiding complicated terminology and financial jargon as much as possible. This writing style was chosen so that the textbook would be accessible to a wide range of readers.

Citation
Format

Schmid, B. J. (2020, June), Development of an Open Textbook for Engineering Economics Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--34456

TY - CPAPER
AB - Engineering Economics is a required course and required for accreditation in most engineering colleges in Canada, the United States, and many other countries.
Open textbooks are textbooks that are licensed under an open copyright license and reside in the public domain. These resources are made available for free to students, instructors, and the general public – essentially anyone can access these resources for free. Engineering Economics textbooks from major publishers typically cost students $200 or more to purchase new.
The University of Saskatchewan had undertaken a review of their Engineering Economics course; evaluating the method of teaching, the topics covered in the course, and the education resources available. The review highlighted additional topics that should be covered in the course and corresponding gaps in available textbook resources.
An opportunity to create an open textbook for the course was pursued to provide a resource to students that was not available. This open textbook focuses on engineering problems and particularly on topics and cases relevant to Canadian Engineers, the Canadian tax system, and includes some topics not typically covered in traditional engineering economics textbooks such as budgeting, cost estimation, and the determination of product costs using principles from management accounting.
One of the most beneficial aspects of open textbooks is that others may use the book and modify it for their particular interest or application. In this textbook few sections, mainly related to taxes, would have to be adapted to a particular country to make the textbook applicable to other regions of the world.
To facilitate the development of the open textbook, funding was made available to the project that allowed the primary authors to hire two undergraduate students and one graduate student to help in the development of the textbook. These students had previously taken the engineering economics course or were in a graduate program related to economics. This strategy was extremely beneficial to both the instructors as primary authors and the students as contributors.
For the student contributors, their work on the open textbook allowed them to more fully understand the course concepts and apply them to examples and cases for the textbook. For the primary authors this work arrangement reduced their workload and provided feedback related to clarity of the explanations and example problems used in the textbook.
The results of this work are an open textbook written for the Canadian context, though easily adapted for other regions, that is available to anyone for free. The textbook was written in simple, clear language; avoiding complicated terminology and financial jargon as much as possible. This writing style was chosen so that the textbook would be accessible to a wide range of readers.

AU - Bradley James Schmid
CY - Virtual On line
DA - 2020/06/22
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Development of an Open Textbook for Engineering Economics
UR - https://peer.asee.org/34456
DO - 10.18260/1-2--34456
ER -