Rapidly rising undergraduate fees and textbook costs impede access to higher education for many students, especially those from underserved and at-risk populations. The ChemWiki is a collaborative approach toward chemistry education where an open-access textbook environment is constantly being written and rewritten, partly by students and partly by faculty members. The result is a free and ultimately high-quality chemistry textbook that supplants the conventional paper-based version. The ChemWiki is multifaceted, highly flexible, and adaptable to any level or course in chemistry and uses established wiki technology to facilitate this mass collaborative effort.
