Open Textbooks: Finding, Evaluating, and Adapting Open Textbooks for Your Course

Link to this as a Google doc http://goo.gl/ZUOSx1 R. John RobertsonOne Session Wonder

November 14, 2013

Introductions

Who are you?

What do you teach?

What interested you in this session?

Framing the session

InformationAdvocacyDiscussionExplorationCritique

This is your session - the slides are context if needed to support our conversation

What is an Open Textbook?

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, e-book, 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.pdfText CC: BY NC ND

Licensing - varieties on...

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

+ Public Domain+ CC 0+ ~ GNU and the like

Why is this something worth thinking about?

Costs

US GAO [report], College Textbookshttp://www.gao.gov/assets/660/655066.pdf

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

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

Self-assessment

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?

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?

Finding

Finding

Google

you might try:● “[topic]” + creative commons● “[topic]” + open textbook

but there are other options

Finding

Looking for Open Textbooks (cf OER, OCW)https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org http://oerconsortium.org/discipline-specific/ http://openstaxcollege.org/bookshttp://www.saylor.org/books/ http://cnx.org/

Finding

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

Finding

http://openstaxcollege.org/textbooks/anatomy-and-physiology/resourceshttps://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=45

https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=78

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-for-biology.html

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)

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.

Finding

Don’t forget the Public Domain

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

Evaluating

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

Evaluating

David Wiley’s thought experiment

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)

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.

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

Adapting

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.

Adapting - an example

From Project Management: from Simple to Complex (FWK textbook originally with open license)

to

Project Management for Instructional Designershttp://pm4id.org/

Adapting: practicalities

License permissions and mixingFormat constraintsTime commitmentsbut working incrementally

And a note on Ploneand GinkoTree (UWM pilot)

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

Making

An aside on Book sprints:OER Booksprint Reflectionshttp://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/lmc/2012/08/31/oer-booksprint-reflections/

References and ResourcesDavid 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