Textbooks are an integral and important resource/s for any course. The ever increasing cost of quality textbooks has created a great burden on students worldwide. Several movements across universities worldwide have been initiated by various bodies to introduce zero cost textbooks for various courses.

In India higher education in certain courses are designed on certain reference books / textbooks which range from low cost editions to high cost editions depending on the authors and publishers. Many a times there are limited number of copies in the libraries as well as some are not available in the form of ebooks. Majority of books are copyrighted thus limits usage or adaptation in any form.

My project is an honest attempt to create an open textbook which will be an open educational resource to the students globally. The topic I selected to write is what I have been teaching for several years which are cell biology and genetics (Cytogenetics).

Cytogenetics draws its inputs from important branches of biological sciences namely cytology/cell biology and genetics. These two components are studied as compulsory units at undergraduate and post graduate levels across universities in mostly all courses leading to majors in Life sciences or Biological sciences or biology.

Project Highlights: The entire concept related to cell biology and genetics would be divided into chapters. Each chapter will include the content from basics to advances in the topics arranged in a sequential flow in simple language and with suitable illustrations/activities. The focus of the book would be to transit information in very simple ways which maybe otherwise get interrupted due to linguistic limitations.

The project would include self-created materials, adaptation of available materials, embedding interactive learning module/s, assignment/s and assessment/s. The creation of this open textbook will be a collaborative effort of peers and students.