One Session Wonder exploring Open Textbooks. Tailored somewhat for Geography, English, and Nursing

1. Open Textbooks: Finding,
Evaluating, and Adapting
Open Textbooks for Your
Course
Link to this as a Google doc http://goo.gl/ZUOSx1
R. John Robertson
One Session Wonder
November 14, 2013

2. Introductions
Who are you?
What do you teach?
What interested you in this session?

3. Framing the session
Information
Advocacy
Discussion
Exploration
Critique
This is your session - the slides are context if
needed to support our conversation

4. What is an Open Textbook?

5. What is an Open Textbook?
“An open textbook is a
textbook licensed under an
open copyright license, and
made available online to be
freely used by students,
teachers and members of the
public. Many open textbooks
are distributed in either print, ebook, or audio formats that may
be downloaded or purchased at
little or no cost”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_textbook
http://www.parlorpress.com/pdf/writing-spaces-v1.pdf
Text CC: BY NC ND

6. Licensing - varieties on...
+ Public Domain
+ CC 0
+ ~ GNU and the
like
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

7. Why is this something worth
thinking about?

8. Costs
US GAO [report],
College Textbooks
http://www.gao.
gov/assets/660/655066.
pdf

9. Costs
Figure 1: Average Estimated Full-Time Undergraduate Budgets, 2013-14 (Enrollment-Weighted) http://trends.
collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/average-estimated-undergraduate-budgets-2013-14
All Rights Reserved

10. Control
When was the last significant update to the
textbook you use?
How much did that suit your course?
Supporting the possibility of currency and
customisation

11. Self-assessment

12. Textbooks: self-assessment
● What influences your textbook choice?
● How often do you reevaluate your textbook
choice?
● Do you know how much the textbook(s) in
your course costs?
● Do you know when it was last updated?

13. Textbooks: self-assessment
● Is your textbook available in a variety of
formats (book, audio, large print, ebook (pdf,
kindle, epub, ...))?
● Do you know (or have an impression of)
what % of your students do not buy the
textbook? Do you know why?

14. Finding

15. Finding
Google
you might try:
● “[topic]” + creative commons
● “[topic]” + open textbook
but there are other options

16. Finding
Looking for Open
Textbooks (cf OER,
OCW)
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org
http://oerconsortium.org/disciplinespecific/
http://openstaxcollege.org/books
http://www.saylor.org/books/
http://cnx.org/

17. Finding
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=96

18. Finding
http://openstaxcollege.
org/textbooks/anatomy-andphysiology/resources
https://open.umn.
edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=78

19. Finding
Plug into existing
conversations through
professional networks
and the ‘scattershot’
results of your initial
Google search.
For example,
http://cain.blogspot.com/2013/07/oer-possible-resources-forbiology.html

20. Finding (different related stuff)
● Boundless https://www.boundless.
com/open-textbooks/
● open textbooks + enhanced stuff for $
● Bookboon http://bookboon.com/ Free, but
not open
● Flat World Knowledge http://catalog.
flatworldknowledge.com/ not free, not open,
but cheap and customizable (within their
framework)

21. Finding
● There’s a lot of materials focused on K-12.
● There’s a lot of dead links.
● There’s a lot of Open Educational Resources
which could be or become an open textbook
but which would need to be adapted.

22. Finding
Don’t forget the Public Domain

23. Payún Matru volcanic field; photo from Nasa’s Earth Observatory; Taken from the ISS

24. Evaluating

25. Evaluating
Beyond the basic evaluation of an academic
resource, how do you start to assess a
textbook?
Write down three things (tips, tricks, criteria)
which help you in selecting a textbook then
discuss them with a colleague

26. Evaluating
David Wiley’s thought experiment

27. Evaluating
And “the quality of learning resources is usually
determined using the following lenses:
● Accuracy
● Reputation of author/institution
● Standard of technical production
● Accessibility
● Fitness for purpose”
(OER Infokit)

28. Evaluating
The wider or abstract discussion and evaluation
of quality is, however, only one dimension of
this discussion.
How you and your students can use it for your
course is the primary question.

29. Evaluating
● PennState - much of their OpenCourseware
is online as html ebooks http://open.ems.
psu.edu/courseware
● natureofgeoinfo.org https://www.e-education.
psu.edu/natureofgeoinfo/
● Earth 106: the African Continent https:
//www.e-education.psu.edu/earth106/l1.html

30. Adapting

31. Adapting
As much as cost plays a role one of the
strongest rationale for open textbooks in
distinction to cheap or free is the ability to do
more or less what you want with the text including the ability to modify or adapt the text.

32. Adapting - an example
From Project Management: from Simple to
Complex
(FWK textbook originally with open license)
to
Project Management for Instructional Designers
http://pm4id.org/

33. Adapting: practicalities
License permissions and mixing
Format constraints
Time commitments
but working incrementally
And a note on Plone
and GinkoTree (UWM pilot)

34. Adopting: other content?
Add other content and consider how to
enhance a text when it’s natively an etext...
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/index.cfm

35. Making
An aside on Book sprints:
OER Booksprint Reflections
http://blogs.cetis.ac.
uk/lmc/2012/08/31/oerbooksprint-reflections/

36. References and Resources
David Wiley, (2013) On Quality and OER http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2947
Nicole Allen (2013) OER and solving the textbook cost crisis http://www.slideshare.
net/txtbks/textbooks-28013186
Quality considerations (OER Infokit)
https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/w/page/24838164/Quality%20considerations