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- Open textbook adoption
Five steps to adopting an Open Textbook for a course.
Open textbook adoption
Quick start
Step 1: find an open textbook
Search for an open textbook from the following sources:
- MERLOT
- Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources
- Global Text Project
- OER Commons
- Orange Grove
- Connexions
- USG Share (click on on word - guest)
- Textbook Revolution
- The Assayer
- MERLOT
- Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources
- Wikibooks
- Audio Books
- CK12 Flexbooks
- Flat World Knowledge
- Public Literature
- Questia
Step 2: review and select an open textbook
As you search for open textbooks in repositories, consider what criteria you will use to select appropriate an open textbook for your own use. You can develop your own criteria or consider adapting existing criteria from other sources.
- Take a look at the criteria available from MERLOT's Peer Review process.
- Consider using or adapting the Evaluation Criteria Checklist used for content in USG Share.
- The Curriki Review System allows content-area experts and teachers to review and rate resources in the Curriki repository.
- A video is available which explains the process.
- See Assessing the quality of open education resource based wikis.
- Watch this video lecture about educational quality assessment.
Make your selection based on criteria such as:
- Quality of content, literary merit and format
- Accuracy
- Timeliness
- Favorable reviews
- Permanence/lasting value
- Authority of author
- Scope and depth
- Physical quality
- Formats available: print, CD-ROM, online, etc.
- Reading level and writing style
- Accessibility
- Language(s)
- Copyright restrictions on modification and reuse
- Cultural relevance
Cultural factors include race, ethnicity, language, nationality, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, income level, and occupation. Ensure that information is relevant to the intended students' social and cultural contexts.
Also, check for ratings, reviews or endorsements of open textbooks and OER by professional societies and organizations. For example, some professional organizations use an endorsement Lens at Connexions to indicate that content meets their minimum standards.
Step 3: customize your selection as desired
Few existing open textbooks will meet all your instructional needs so you may want to customize the open textbook you have selected.
Consider the following ways you may want to modify the open textbook to make it more appropriate for your teaching style:Combine two or more open textbooks and OER.
Rearrange the content in the open textbook.Add a glossary, hyperlinks, and test bank.
Make edits to improve accuracy and currency.Make the content usable by students with visual impairment.
The BookBuilder tool at CAST is just one of several tools that can be used to create your own customized version of the open textbook. Another tool is available from BongoBooks.If the open textbook you selected is in the Connexions repository, you can make your own copy of the open textbook then make your own modifications as a 'derivative work.'
CK12 and Flat World Knowledge allow for development of modified versions of open textbooks.
Source:
OpenStax, Ideas and tools for improving connexions modules and collections. OpenStax CNX. Mar 22, 2010 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11184/1.2
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