Course Announcements
Final Course Email (sent February 6, 2015)
Well, this is it. The final Adopting Open Textbooks workshop wrap-up email.
Thank you so much for traveling with us along the open textbook road for the past 4 weeks. While the workshop is officially wrapping up, the course archive at adoptotb.com will remain open and online for as long as P2Pu will host it. There are no plans to take the site down, so feel free to refer back to it, send others to it for information and (most importantly) reuse it, remix it and modify any portion of the course as the CC license allows for your own purposes.
Webinar Archive
The archive for this weeks webinar from Leslie Kennedy from MERLOT has been posted.
Course Evaluation
If you have a minute, we would love to get your feedback on the workshop for possible future iterations of the workshop. Fill out the evaluation form and you'll have a chance to win a Creative Commons team open t-Shirt.
Final Badges
We'll stop awarding badges at the end of next week so you have some time to submit your final badgeable assignment. If you need a space to submit the assignment to, we have a shared Google Doc where you can post your open textbook lifecycle to.
If you have completed all 4 badgeable activities, apply for a course completion badge.
Connecting with Others
For those of you who introduced yourself in the first week, Lauri has captured all your social media contact information into a single Google Doc. At the start of the course we hoped that one thing you would take away from this course are some new connections, and we hope this will help enable those connections.
Upcoming Open Events
A couple of upcoming open events that you may be interested in taking part in.
• March 9-13, 2015: Open Webinars for Open Education Week As part of the global Open Education Week, BCcampus is sponsoring a week of Open Education webinars with numerous guest speakers from around the Open Education world. We have some great talks lined up on accessibility, Open Education research, Open Pedagogy, and the role of libraries in open education.
• May 28-29, 2015: The BC Open Textbook Summit in Vancouver BC brings together leaders in the Open Textbook field, faculty who are reviewing, adopting and developing Open Textbooks, student advocates, librarians, institutional administrators, government officials, and policy staff. The call for presenters and registration is now open.
• November 18-20, 2015: BCcampus is co-hosting the annual OpenEd Conference in Vancouver, BC. The 2014 website is still up, but we'll be posting some new information about the 2015 event in November in the next month or so.
Thank you!
Finally, a big thank you to you from Amanda, Lauri and myself. When we planned this we had no idea it would be quite this big (328 registrants) and we have been blown away by the level of interest and the engagement of the participants. Thank you!
Week 4 Introduction (sent February 2, 2015)
Welcome to Week 4 of the Adopting Open Textbook Workshop: Finding, Evaluating and Modify Open Textbooks
In the previous three weeks we have discussed what are open textbooks (and, more broadly, what is open education). We've examined open licenses, and have taken a look at ways institutions support the use of open textbooks.
This week, we take some of what you have learned in those previous three weeks and look at finding and evaluating open textbooks. If you have come into the workshop looking for specific resources, post what you are looking for and see if there are others who can help you find the resource you are looking for.
We'll also be looking at some of the qualities that make a good textbook, the additional questions you should ask when looking specifically at an open textbook, and why you may want to look at adapting the textbook to fit your pedagogical needs.
Badgeable Activity
The badgeable activity this week is called "Life of a CC-BY open textbook" where we ask you to envision the life of an open textbook as it moves from creation to use to adaptation and all the paths that one book can take as it gets used, reused and modified over the years. Remember: after you have posted your lifecycle, you need to apply for the badge to be awarded the badge.
Webinar
This week we'll be joined by Leslie Kennedy, Director of the Affordable Learning Solutions at California State University (CSU). Leslie will join us and show us the OER repository MERLOT and some of the features that can help faculty find and vet open textbooks and other types of OER's. Leslie will also be talking about initiatives in California to support faculty who are adopting open textbooks, like COOL4Ed the California Open Online Library for Education. The webinar happens Wednesday, February 4th at 11am PST in our usual Collaborate room (and we are working on getting the archives recorded into another format for those of you who have had problems accessing the archives).
Keep commenting, tweeting, questioning, and blogging. Contact us anytime at adoptotb@bccampus.ca, on Twitter using the hashtag #adoptotb, or post in the Google+ community.
Week 3 Recap
During week 3 we explored questions related to individual and institutional readiness, and support systems needed for transition to open textbooks. The conversation started this week, asking if your institution is ready to adopt open textbooks or OER in general. There was a lot of discussion with regard to the need for faculty support to integrate these learning materials properly into courses. A critical question was raised by Cami3595 asking what the barriers are to adopting open textbooks. There were numerous responses to this conversation and I would encourage you to review the threaded discussion.
In terms of self- readiness to adopting open textbooks there seemed to be a positive uptake in the individual readiness to take on an open textbook. The key for many is to find the pockets of least resistance at the institution to move the adoption of an open textbook forward. One important point I can add to this, is that you don’t need to revamp an entire department to adopt an open textbook. Start small. Start with one course, or one section of a course. Review the learning outcomes of that course and identify if there is an open textbook that you could adopt for that particular subject area based on those learning outcomes.
Badges
Many of you completed the activity but didn’t apply for a badge. It was great to see how everyone was envisioning the adoption process in their institutions. Lots of similar pathways- thanks for sharing. You can review some of the mapping activities here: https://p2pu.org/en/courses/2675/content/5883/
Webinar
Week 3’s webinar was with Linda Williams and Daniel DeMarte of Tidewater Community College in Virginia. They spoke about the process their institution took to creating a ZERO cost textbook Business Administration degree. You can access the recording of that webinar here: https://plus.google.com/108877146991207001920/posts/3q4ruonax7f
Week 4
WOW week 4 is on the horizon!! Special thanks to everyone in the workshop for their attention- keep going folks, we have a great week ahead.
Week 4’s topic is finding and evaluating textbooks. We'll be discussing some of the qualities that make a good textbook and exploring some of the technologies associated with open textbooks. One of the biggest hurdles many faculty face when it comes to open textbooks is where to begin to find them. In week 4 we'll show you some of the places where you can find open textbooks and some of the features of the different repositories that can help you evaluate open textbooks.
As well, we will be joined by Leslie Kennedy, Director of the Affordable Learning Solutions at California State University (CSU) who will talk to us about the OER repository MERLOT and initiatives in California to support faculty who are adopting open textbooks, like COOL4Ed the California Open Online Library for Education. Join us on Wed Feb 4 at 11:00 am PST for this webinar.
Thanks for your posts, tweets, comments and discussions. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact Clint, Lauri or myself at adoptotb@bccampus.ca, on Twitter using the hashtag #adoptotb, or post in the Google+ community. Have a great weekend!
Welcome to Week 3!
Welcome to Week 3 of the Adopting Open Textbook Workshop. If you are catching up this week, not a problem, remember this workshop is self paced.
This week, week 3, we are focusing on institutional and personal readiness to take on Open Educational Resources. During this week we will explore questions related to individual and institutional readiness, and support systems needed for transition to open textbooks.
Badge Activity
The badgeable activity this week is called “Mapping the Way”. You will be awarded this badge for creating a roadmap for adopting an Open Textbook.
Webinar
We feel so fortunate to be joined by two institutional advocates of a zero cost degree program at Tidewater Community College. Linda Williams and Daniel DeMarte will talk to us about their experience of adopting open educational resources and how they were able to get their institution and faculty on board. Get your questions ready and join us on Wednesday January 28 at 11:00 am PST.
You guys have been such rock stars in this course. We absolutely love the community that has been built and the work that each of you is contributing to the workshop. Keep commenting, tweeting, questioning, and blogging. Contact us anytime at adoptotb@bccampus.ca, on Twitter using the hashtag #adoptotb, or post in the Google+ community.
Week 2 Recap - email sent January 23, 2015
During this week we familiarized ourselves with Creative Commons (CC) licenses, learned how to apply them, and discussed how they impact the use of resources. There was a lot of discussion about how people are using CC licenses in their own work, both in careers as well as personally. Questions centred around the USE of CC licenses, as in “how the heck do you appropriately attribute?!” There were numerous requests for clarification re: the Share Alike (SA) and Non Commercial (NC) licenses. Examples included: “if I put an NC licenses on my work, the SA is not necessary to require others to keep the NC when they share their derivatives of my work?” “CC-BY-NC requires Adapted Material to be used for non-commercial purposes only. Does that mean, say, a Remixed OTB adapted from a CC-BY-NC licensed work can only be licensed -NC as a whole?” You can read the responses within the comments section.
Examples of Creative Commons in use was highlighted by the Joe Moxley story. It was great reading your feedback, comments, and reflections on the article. A question posed both on twitter and within the comments section was regarding open textbook and oer publishing examples as counting toward tenure and promotion. I sent this question out to a couple of list serv’s and we received some feedback (the love power of community!)
“I am an example of such a person. I am a tenured faculty member at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, VA, and I earned tenure, in part, due to my work on an open textbook, Fundamentals of Matrix Algebra. I am applying for promotion this year to full professor, and I think that my application gains a lot of strength from my work in writing APEX Calculus, an open calculus textbook.
You can learn more about what we are doing here at VMI at www.vmi.edu/apex ; you can learn way too much about the calc book at www.apexcalculus.com.”
...and
“I know in my five year review, the book features heavily in my "professional and curriculum development" categories, and it always is mentioned by the Deans in their reviews as well.
With the push towards accessibility, I can't see why such work wouldn't count for something in a tenure portfolio.
My advice is to tie in that work with the goals of the school. Certainly, OER work makes college more affordable, and hence, accessible, so it is important work."
Hopefully these examples will help YOU drive the initiative at your own institution to not only encourage your faculty but also showcase and reward the work of and use of OER.
Badges
Wow a great week of badges! “Attribution Contribution” was well received- we awarded 10 badges and thank you to everyone who participated in the activity.
Webinar
Week 2’s webinar with Paul Stacey, Associate Director of Global Learning at Creative Commons was a huge highlight. Paul gave an outstanding overview of Creative Commons and managed to answer all of the questions we had posed to him. Hopefully some of you were able to gain some clarity between the SA and NC licenses - I know I did. You can access the recording here: https://plus.google.com/108877146991207001920/posts/3c1Eqeuw8vz and you can review Paul’s slides over on SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/Paul_Stacey/bccampus-open-textbook-workshop
Week 3
In the upcoming week we will explore questions related to individual and institutional readiness, and support systems needed for transition to open textbooks. Linda Williams and Daniel DeMarte of Tidewater Community College will be our guest speakers for the webinar on January 28th (Wednesday) at 11:00 am PST. If you haven’t heard their story about implementing a ZERO cost textbook degree, you will want to join us!
Thanks for your posts, tweets, comments and discussions. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact Clint, Lauri or myself at adoptotb@bccampus.ca, on Twitter using the hashtag #adoptotb, or post in the Google+ community. Have a great weekend!
Welcome to Week 2! Sent Monday, January 19
Welcome to Week 2 of the Adopting Open Textbook Workshop. Hopefully you had the opportunity to introduce yourself to the rest of the workshop, complete the readings and participate in the activities for Week 1. If you are catching up this week, not a problem, remember this workshop is self paced.
Week 2’s focus is Creative Commons. During this week we will familiarize ourselves with Creative Commons (CC) licenses, learn how to apply them, and discuss how they impact the use of resources.
Badge Activity
The badgeable activity this week is called “Attribution Contribution” (clever eh?) . You will be awarded this badge for properly attributing Creative Commons licenses.
Webinar
Get your questions ready and join us on Wednesday January 21 at 11:00 am PST with Paul Stacey from Creative Commons.
We are really enjoying the momentum of the workshop- keep commenting, tweeting, questioning, and blogging. Contact us anytime at adoptotb@bccampus.ca, on Twitter using the hashtag #adoptotb, or post in the Google+ community.
Week 1 Recap sent Saturday, January 17, 2015
We've had a great start to the Adopting Open Textbooks workshop. We have passed 300 participants from around the world. Welcome to all of you.
If you have not had a chance to meet some of the people you are taking this course with, spend some time reviewing the introductions of the people you are taking this course with.
Week 1 Recap
This week we delved into the world of open education, looking at some of the activities that fall under the banner of Open Education. You heard a talk from David Wiley that makes the case that, at its heart, all education is about sharing. David is widely regarded as the father of open education, and his blog is a must read for open educators. We also went deeper into Open Educational Resources and open textbooks, and took a look at what the 5R's are.
Towards the end of the week, Amanda shared a very timely post from David Wiley called The Deeper Ethics of Education and Open: Generosity, Care, and Relationships in which David makes the case that open educational resources and sharing what we create is really the first step to becoming an open educator. That theme of OER as the start, not the end, of the process of becoming an open educator was also picked up on by Audrey Watters in a blog post on her popular Hack Education blog entitled What Do We Mean By Open Education?
There was also a post shared about Pierce College Math Instructor David Lippman saving his students $1 million dollars by using open textbooks, and an article from the Wall Street Journal on why textbooks have become so expensive.
Badges
This week, we've awarded 18 badges to course participants for completing the introduction. Thank you everyone who persevered and submitted for the week 1 badge. We're still learning ourselves how the badging system works and know that the first week was a bit clunky with the execution.
Webinar
Our guest this week was Nicole Finkbeiner from OpenStax College. In the webinar, Nicole spoke about the history of OpenStax, about the OpenStax textbook development process, and some of the challenges and benefits of adopting open textbooks. If you missed it, the 38 minute archive of the recording is posted on the course website.
Week 2
The upcoming week is about Creative Commons and CC licensing. You'll be learning about the different flavours of CC licenses, and how to go about working with CC licensed material. Paul Stacey from Creative Commons will be our webinar guest on Wednesday at 11am PST.
A relevant CC related blog post was shared this week by course participant Heather Ross of the University of Saskatchewan. In the post, Heather speaks about how she would like to see a new CC licenses that allows non-profit use.
Thanks for your posts, tweets, comments and discussions. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact Lauri, Amanda or myself at adoptotb@bccampus.ca, on Twitter using the hashtag #adoptotb, or post in the Google+ community.
Pre-course email sent Friday, January 9, 2015
Thanks for registering for the BCcampus Adopting Open Textbooks Online Workshop.
We’re getting close to the start date of this workshop, and this email will give you the information you need for when the workshop opens on Monday.
Workshops Dates: Monday, January 12 - Friday, February 6, 2015 Estimated weekly time commitment: 3 - 5 hours
Workshop website
The main website is http://adoptotb.com. This is the hub of the workshop and contains all the content, links, videos and readings. You do not need an account to access this site. All the content is open and viewable by anyone.
There is also a Google+ community for workshop participants to use as a place to converse and share resources. You do not need a Google account to view any of the activity in the community. However, if you wish to participate and contribute to the community, you will need a Google account to post or respond.
For those of you who use Twitter, the hashtag for the course is #adoptOTB.
Self-paced
This course is self paced, meaning you can work on the content as your schedule allows. All the content and activities for all 4 weeks are available from day one. Feel free to work ahead and go through the content at your own speed. The only time sensitive activity is the live weekly webinar, and those are always recorded so you can view them anytime.
Weekly webinars
Each Wednesday at 11am PST, there will be a 30 minute webinar featuring a special guest. If you cannot attend the live sessions, you can view the recorded version of each session later. The archives will be online by 5pm PST each Wednesday.
The first webinar is scheduled for Wednesday, January 14 and our guest will be Nicole Finkbeiner, Associate Director Institutional Relations for OpenStax College. Nicole will be talking about the OpenStax College textbook collection, their textbook development process and how OpenStax supports faculty who adopt their textbooks.
Weekly emails
At the end of each week, we will send out an email that recaps the highlights of the week and previews the follow week’s topic. If you are receiving this email, then you will receive the weekly updates. We will also be posting the updates on the Course Announcements page. Who is participating in this course
As of this email, there are over 275 registrants from around North America for this course. Most of you are from colleges, universities and institutes. Over 20% are from British Columbia.
At the end of the first week, we will post a list of all participants who have completed the introductory activity so you can see who else is taking the course.
Badgeable activities
Badges will be issued with a possible five badges available for the entire course. Each week offers a badgeable activity that you can complete. If you earn all four badges, you will also be awarded a course badge at the end of the workshop. To complete a badgeable activity, you will need an account with P2Pu.
Who are we and how to contact us
Collectively, we are a group of people who work for an organization called BCcampus in British Columbia (BC), Canada. BCcampus is a publicly funded, higher education organization supporting collaborative projects across the BC higher education system. One of our major projects is the BC Open Textbook Project which encourages the adoption and use of open textbooks across the BC post-secondary system.
Individually, we are:
Clint Lalonde Senior Manager, Open Education Clint supports the development and sharing of open educational resources in BC. He manages SOL*R (the BC open learning repository), and is actively involved in the research of educational technologies that support both online and blended teaching and learning practice.
Amanda Coolidge Manager, Open Education Amanda supports the development and sharing of open educational resources in BC. She project manages the adoption, adaptation, and creation of OER and provides technical and instructional design support for the BC Open Textbook Project.
Lauri Aesoph Manager, Open Education Lauri project manages the adoption, adaptation, and creation of OER and provides technical and instructional design support for the BC Open Textbook Project. She supports the development and sharing of open educational resources in BC.
Email us: AdoptOTB@bccampus.ca
We look forward to your participation in the course. We’ll see you all online next week!