Monthly Archive for February, 2010

Sincere thanks to everyone who took the time last week to offer up their ideas on their favourite Open Textbook example. You can see all the submissions to the Google form so far.

In conversation with some esteemed peers this week, though, it became clear that there are multiple ways to approach this issue, not just ‘what are the best open textbooks’ but also ‘in which courses would a quality open textbook have the biggest impact?’

So for folks here in BC - what course(s) in your institution would an open textbook have the biggest impact on? This might be the highest enrollment course, meaning savings for the largest number of people, but it might also be the course with an inordinately expensive text, or one with both an expesnive text and room for quality improvements. Please let me know in the comments below. We’ll definitely be looking into this same issue at the system-wide level in BC, but I am interested to hear from specific people/institutions where they think the highest impact might be. - SWL

So I really appreciate the folks who spent the time offering links to what they felt where the best Open Textbooks. In addition to some twitter replies and emails I received the following submissions through the Google form.

These are really valuable, but I also feel a bit sheepish, like I shouted out for feedback before doing enough due dilligence myself (it’s ok, I can forgive myself if you can, I no longer can keep track of the number of balls in the air, plates spinning, irons in the fire or whatever metaphor for headswimming busy-ness you might care to choose.)

Because when I did some digging of my own, I found an enormous amount of helpful material already being produced by people focused in specifically on Open Textbooks (I am but a Johnny-come-lately.) So to make amends, I thought I’d share some of what I’ve found, lbeit not overly digested or analysed. Share early and often, right?

The first thing I found quite useful were two sites that laid out some criteria for assessing Open Textbooks. So from a Community College Open Textbook Collaborative page on Conexions I found the following criteria:

• Quality of content, literary merit and format
• Timeliness
• Favorable reviews
• Permanence/lasting value
• Authority: author
• Scope
• Physical quality
• Format: print, CD-ROM, online, etc.
• reading level

while from the Open Textbook project at OER Commons I found this set of review criteria:

• Clarity of course materials
• Absence of Content errors
• Appropriateness of course materials
• Interface
• Content usefulness
• Consistency of course materials
• Suggested changes
• Exemplary features

as well as

• Cultural relevance
• Reading level
• Readability in terms of logic and flow
• Accuracy
• Modularity (or the ability to take apart, mash up and remix the content)
• Universal accessibility (thus permitting all populations - no matter the physical constraint - to access content)
• Color printing and graphics as an available option, in all print materials
• Meet as many specific course articulation requirements as possible
• Ability to transport content to modalities other than print (cell phones, and other portable devices, for example)
• Content should be as interoperable on as many platforms as possible
• How does this open textbook compare with the best commercial textbook available in my discipline, and/or the commercially published textbook that I am using for my course.

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These are all for me useful starting points in identifying “quality” Open Textbooks, a job made easier by groups like the Community College Open Textbook Collaborative providing this list of “endorsed” textbook content from the Connexions site, as well as more detailed Reviews on their own site. The Assayer is another site that is attempting to provide reviews of ‘Open Textbooks’ (understood a bit more loosely, hence the scare quotes.)

The other thing that should have been obvious to me but that only became clear as I began to dig into this a bit deeper,is that in addition to providing cheaper textbooks, we can do a service to students by pointing them to free copies of original source texts that are studied in many courses, especially in the humanities. So in addition to the VAST amounts of academic content being freed by the likes of the Open Content Alliance, and the trailblazing work by the pioneering Gutenberg Project, we can now look for (and suggest to students) free eBooks and digital versions from sites like feedbooks, manybooks, and more!

This is just the start of this for me, so expect more regularly over the next year, but I wanted to give back some of what I am finding, especially since I should have done more of this to begin with. - SWL

Last February, in the run up to Northern Voice, a bunch of us in BC post-secondary got together on the UBC campus to meet and discuss the various ways in which we were starting to use Wordpress (and WPMU) on our campuses. I had some high (unrealistic) ambitions for the meeting, and while I felt like we didn’t necessarily meet those, it did feel like it was a good start to the conversation here in BC that allowed people to meet each other, see what they were doing, get inspired & encouraged about their own work, and share some of the issues we face in common.

I’ve been wanting to do a follow up, and since this year’s ETUG Spring Workshop is happening June 7-8 at the University of Victoria, some of us thought we’d try to organize another “WordCampEd” around that event, given that it typically brings together many of the interested folks.

So, three questions in this informal poll, which you can reply to in the comments below (and please circulate this as widely as you like; we’re not “exclusive” though it is likely to be mostly folks from BC post-secondary attending.)

1. Does this sound like something you’d like to attend? We’re not asking for you to sign up yet (it will be free), just a show of hands to help us figure out what size/type of venue we need to find
2. The ETUG event is on a Monday June 7th and Tuesday June 8th. Yes, I know, weird. In terms of doing this kind of session, should we be looking at:
   • full day session? half-day? less?
   • Sunday the 6th? (might have to be off campus.) During the ETUG meetings (potentially as a proposed session)? Afterhours on either the 7th or 8th? Or the day after, Wednesday the 9th?
3. What would you like to focus on? Do you want scheduled talks? Unorganized collaboration time? Self-forming interest groups? Something else? Think about what we can usefully do in a face to face session that we couldn’t just do online (and the answer might be “nothing,” which is ok too.)

Let us know. I’m not “leading” anything, just starting a discussion. So far I know there is interest from UVic, the hosts of the ETUG conference, and a few others who were instrumental in the earlier gathering have also indicated interest. You should all consider yourselves part of the organizing committee. Indeed, somebody please jump in and take over, I’m happy to help but would much prefer those with a bigger stake in their WP installations to lead the charge. - SWL

I hate to use war metaphors, not only because they refer to a practice I abhor but because they are so trite. But I am getting tired of people blindly accepting the official line of copyright and intellectual “property” as some sort of eternal right, rather than the modern (and increasingly faltering) invention it is. The relationship between “content,” “owners,” “culture” and “folk” morphs and fluctuates over time, and whilst the people who have built up whole industries on selling you content would have you believe that the only role you have is as a consumer, an empty vessel into which they can pour their contenty goodness, it’s time we fought back. So join the not so secret revolution, share your content, use those non-rivalrous goods to make the world a better, more beautiful place. This one’s for you, Jimbo Groomie!

http://u.nu/7awv4

2010 promises to be the year of the Open Textbook here in BC as we turn our attention to helping existing open textbooks get adopted by institutions in our province, help our system partners get involved in existing projects and potentially start new ones.

As part of this, I am really interested in hearing about the best examples already out there of Open Textbooks. If you know of a great example, can you take 2 minutes and let us know via this google form?I promise all results wil be shared.

I know the avant garde of ed tech will gripe loudly about the content-centric nature of this request, and while I don’t philosophically disagree, given existing practices in institutions, Open Textbooks represent a near term all-round win (well, except for maybe the publishers, ahem) that we need to help entrench the philosophy of openness and sharing in our public institutions. - SWL