In the last few years, open textbook development has picked up dramatically due both to the expense of commercially published textbooks and the increasing availability of high-quality OER alternatives. While this offers a tremendous benefit in terms of lowering student textbook costs, the question remains, to what extent (if any) do open textbooks influence the amount and method in which students engage with their open textbooks. The answers to these questions should provide useful new insights for all involved in open textbooks and aid in their continued development and propagation. Despite seeming difficulty in gathering data to answer these questions, the digital nature of open textbooks, makes it possible to enable a learning analytics system for open textbooks to track how exactly students are interacting with their open textbooks. To date learning analytics for open textbooks has received relatively little attention.To this end, this paper proposes a framework that can act as a useful guide for setting up learning analytics system for open textbooks also applicable to other digital textbooks. The paper concludes by outlining directions for future work.

Textbook costs have skyrocketed in recent years, putting them beyond the reach of many students, but Learning analytics offers a faster and more objective means of data collection and processing than traditional counterparts, such as surveys and questionnaires, and-most importantly-with their capability to provide direct evidence of learning, they present the opportunity to enhance both learner performance and environment. With such benefits on offer, it is hardly surprising that the optimism surrounding learning analytics is mounting. However, in practice, it has been pointed out that the technology to deliver its potential is still very much in its infancy, which is true in the case of open textbooks. Against this background, the main aim of our study was to develop a prototype open textbook learning analytics system to track individual learners' online and offline interactions with their open textbooks in electronic publication (EPUB) format, and to present its developmental work as building blocks for future development in this area. We conclude with a discussion of the practical implications of our work and present directions for future work.

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