BC Open Textbook Summit 2017

In this presentation, I plan to share how we've executed a grass-roots strategy over the past two years to build openly licensed textbooks with almost no institutional funding or support at a large North American public research university. By harnessing open software (like Pressbooks and other WordPress plugins) and the goodwill of content experts here, we've managed to obtain consortium-level Pressbooks hosting through Unizin, develop procedures that allow any interested party on campus to create an open text, and form a Pressbooks user's group, despite almost no institutional funding (~$3500 USD in grants from our university so far). I'll give a brief overview of a handful of the 50+ active projects in development here which demonstrates some of the additional plugins we've integrated to extend the interactive capabilities of Pressbooks (H5P and hypothes.is, among others) and invites the audience to interact with these books. I will also describe our future development wishlist/roadmap, including our desire to instrumentalize Pressbooks/H5P to generate useful learning analytics that respect learners' privacy and develop a working LTI integration that will allow our texts to send grade reports to LMSes. My hope is that this presentation will serve both as encouragement to others trying to further open education goals at their institutions with little to no funding and attract a group of peers with similar goals to collaborate on a shared development plan (particularly in regards to learning analytics and LTI development).

Steel Wagstaff, Instructional Technology Consultant, UW-Madison

Policy can play an important role in advancing the creation, adoption and sustainability of open educational resources. At both the government and institutional levels, policy can affect important factors such as how resources like funding and staff are allocated, what goals and priorities are set, and what kind of activities are encouraged. Policymakers themselves can also be important allies, using their influence to raise awareness, call for action, or clear barriers.

This workshop will explore the ways that open textbooks and open educational resources intersect with policy at the institutional, state/provincial, and national levels, and how members of the audience can get involved in developing, passing and implementing policies. It will be broken into three parts:

Part 1: Overview of government OER policy, including examples from the U.S. and Canada, and tips for advocacy.

Part 2: Overview of OER policy at the institutional level, including examples and a tool for building your own institutional policy.

Part 3: The room will then split up into small groups to each develop an OER policy idea, then share their plan back with the group.

For many student leaders, finding ways to make a post-secondary degree more affordable is a top priority. Many student leaders have heard about the benefits of OER, but may not be aware of the tactics needed to actually transition their campus to OER. In recognition of this, this workshop will provide attendees with an overview of how grassroots organizing can be applied to OER advocacy. Separated into two halves, the first half of the session will provide an overview of what grassroots organizing is and how student leaders have been successful with such approaches, while the second half will provide attendees with the opportunity to think through how grassroots organizing can be applied in their own context. Bringing together both student leaders new to OER as well as those with experience, this session will provide attendees with the opportunity to connect, learn from one another and commit to further action that can be taken on their campuses through grassroots organizing.

Presenter: Nicole Allen is the Director of Open Education for SPARC. Nicole leads SPARC's work on Open Education, including advocating for U.S. federal and state policy, supporting on-campus efforts to advance OER through academic libraries, and international advocacy for open education through the Open Government Partnership. Nicole has been working to advance open education for over ten years and has a background in grassroots organizing and policy advocacy.

Presenter: Brady Yano is the Assistant Director of Open Education for SPARC. In this role he provides support and leads special projects across SPARC’s Open Education portfolio. Brady was first introduced to OER while serving as a student leader at Simon Fraser University. Recognizing the benefits that greater OER adoption would bring, he organized the "#textbookbrokeBC" campaign with fellow BC student leaders. Chat with Brady about OER, libraries and student advocacy.

Presenter: Kaitlin (Katie) Steen is the Open Education Fellow at SPARC . Katie has a long history in student advocacy and has worked on higher education policy at both the state and federal level.

Over the past two years with the support of Open School BC, Camosun College has developed 23 open textbooks and a number of ancillary resources for Trades training. The digital distribution of open textbooks allow for a seamless integration of multimedia learning assets which can enrich both teaching and learning.

At Camosun we have developed several interactive “games” to allow students to practice assembling scaffolding and to use and read several measurement devices. 

In this workshop Camosun’s development team will introduce participants to some of the concepts utilized in designing and developing these assets. Participants will get hands-on experience in an interactive workshop, in which they will demonstrate how to build additional exercises for a Multimeter learning asset.  Individuals who the appropriate computer resources will be able to build their own activities both in and after the workshop. As well, we will present on how Camosun is maximizing the use of open resources for trades training.  We will also look at the interdisciplinary approach we have taken at our institutions which involves faculty, students, staff and external partnerships.

Sarah-Jayne McAndrew Roe
Sarah-Jayne is a Continuing Education instructor and employee at Camosun College.  She has worked on a variety of different programs, most recently on the delivery of essential skills training and development of a blended learning trades program at Camosun. Sarah has a BA Honours in Fine Arts from Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education from the University of Sunderland.


Matthew Zeleny
Matt Zeleny is an Applied Research Specialist at Camosun Innovates and in Camosun’s Technology Access Centre.  He works on numerous projects for industry involving 3D scanning, reverse engineering, prototyping and CAD design. Matt has a wide range of knowledge and experience in the areas of 3D scanning technologies and processes, non-conventional silicone moulding and the creation and utilization of 3D printed parts.  Matt also works with faculty from Camosun’s Pipe Trades and technology student interns to create open learning ancillary resources.  Matt is a graduate from Camosun’s Engineering Graphics Technician program and a Certified Solidworks Professional,

Hebron Watson
Hebron Watson is an international student from the Bahamas studying Computer Science Technology at Camosun.  When not studying, he is also an intern at Camosun Innovates and works on open resource projects.

Pressbooks, an open source book publishing platform, is getting used by more and more Open Textbook projects, and this is by far the most interesting (to us!) use for Pressbooks. In this talk, Hugh McGuire (founder of Pressbooks) will talk about why Open Textbooks offer such exciting technical possibilities. He’ll give an overview of the Pressbooks development roadmap, with a focus on Open Textbooks-specific features. The talk will cover things like: making it easy to find openly licensed Pressbooks books, about making reusing, revising & remixing easy, about accessibility, annotations, and making better web interfaces for books. 

If all goes well we'll demo with everyone the ease of remixing using Pressbooks.

Hugh McGuire has been building tools and communities that bring books onto the web for a decade. He is the co-founder of the Rebus Foundation, founder of Pressbooks, LibriVox, Pressbooks, and iambik. You can find him @hughmcguire.

Lumen Learning began working with institutions to replace traditional textbooks with OER in May 2011. More than five years later we have seen a many successes and failures, but more importantly, gained insight into the factors the have a measurable impact (good and bad) on student learning.

This presentation will present insights from along the road, and engage participants in exploring how we might expand and refine OER adoption to better support students and faculty to increase learning.

Kim Thanos, Co-founder and CEO, Lumen Learning

Based on the experiences of the OpenStax Institutional Partner Program and partnering schools, this workshop will provide participants with a strategic plan outline and strategies to greatly increase faculty use of OER on their campuses. Through group and individual activities, participants will learn the criteria for writing and implementing effective strategies, how to track the effectiveness of each strategy, how to time strategies so they have the most impact, and how to pull it all together to create into an effective plan.

As managing director, Daniel guides OpenStax in saving students across the country millions of dollars. He has dedicated the past ten years of his life to developing education startups from conception to culmination, with specialties in open education, content development, ed-tech, consumer intelligence, management, and quality assurance.