Presentation given at eternity (European textbook reusability networking and interoperability) initiative stakeholder meeting, outlining OER perspective on eTextbooks. Defines OER in terms of Creative Commons licences and outlines implication of this for ebooks as OERs, inlcuding OER content in ebooks, and commercial ebook content in OERs.

1. eTextBooks, the OER
perspective.
Phil Barker phil.barker@hw.ac.uk
JISC CETIS @philbarker
Heriot-Watt University

2. Introduction
http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/
http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk/
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/oer/
UKOER

3. OER: Definition
Open educational resources can be defined as
‘teaching, learning, and research resources that reside
in the public domain or have been released under an
intellectual property license that permits their free use
and re-purposing by others. Open educational
resources include full courses, course materials,
modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software,
and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to
support access to knowledge.’
http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open-educational-resources

4. OER: Definition
“open educational resources should be freely
shared through open licences which facilitate use,
revision, translation, improvement and sharing by
anyone”
Capetown declaration on open education
http://www.capetowndeclaration.org

5. OER Definition
Educational resource
+

6. eTextBooks as Educational Resources
I hope this will be dealt with during the rest of the project
Issue include
• multimedia animations and simulations
• dynamic & adaptive content
• direct linking and embedding
• social connections
• adopt-adapt-improve (remix and republish)
...nothing we haven’t spent 15+yrs talking about

7. eTextBooks as OERs
• Need to avoid assumptions that eTextBook will be
paid-for.
• Need to be able to express CC licences.
• Need technology that permits what is allowed by the
licence (e.g. format that is portable, editable,
disaggregable)
• Desirable that technology supports what is required by
the licence (e.g. keeps attribution when copied / editted)

8. OER in eTextBooks
• Existing OERs tend to reflect what teachers use in
class: MS Powepoint, Word / Adobe pdf; lecture capture
and recordings; animations & interactive models
• Interest in HTML5 and EPUB
• Not so much emphasis on eLearning technical
standards

9. Commercial eTextBook content and
OER
PublishOER project
http://www.medev.ac.uk/ourwork/oer/publishoer/
What’s in it for publishers?
• Market visibility (=> acknowledgement & tracking)
• Not as OER (=> time limited licence, mixed licences)
Pearson Project Blue Sky
http://www.pearsonlearningsolutions.com/pearson-bluesky
• OER and paid-for content in commercial “learning
solution”

10. Licence and attribution
By Phil Barker <phil.barker@hw.ac.uk>, JISC
CETIS <http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk>
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 Unported licence.
To view a copy of this licence, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a
letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite
300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.