Adoption of Open Textbooks

Adoption of Open Textbooks

Created by

Judy Baker, Ph.D.

Published by

Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources
Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, CA

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License

2009

 Quick Start

To use open textbooks in your courses, follow these steps:

Step 1: Find an open textbook from the listing at the Community College Consortium of Open Educational Resources and other sources.

Step 2: Review your open textbook selection for quality based on criteria.

Step 3: Customize your selection as desired.

Step 4: Disseminate your the open textbook to your students.

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
• Wikibooks
• CK12 Flexbooks
• Flat World Knowledge
• Public Literature
• Questia
• Audio Books

Quick Start

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.

Make your selection based on criteria such as:

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.

Quick Start

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 use Connexions tools to make your own copy of the open textbook then make your own modifications as a 'derivative work.'

CK12 and Flat World Knowledge also allow for development of modified versions of open textbooks.

Quick Start

Step 4:  Disseminate Your Open Textbook to Your Students

Disseminate your open textbook in either digital or print format to students in your course. Be sure that an accessible version of the open textbook is available for your students with visual impairments.

Do-It-Yourself

1.  Email the website address of the open textbook to your students. 

2.  Download the open textbook as a file (e.g., Word, Open Office, PDF).  Email the file to your enrolled students.

3.  Post the website address or document file to your students' course management system course site.

If the Word document file or PDF is too large to email or post, use a free online file storage or file sharing service

• Box.net
• BT Digital Vault
• Openomy Tour of Lulu

Students can download and print the Word document file, PDF, or website contents.

Campus Printshop

Printing Services

Background

Open Textbooks

Open textbooks are freely available under a license that allows users to read, download, and/or print content in various file formats from several websites and open educational resources (OER) repositories.  An open textbook is a body of educational content that is openly available via the Internet, by mail, or in a bookstore with a copyright that allows copying and distribution or, with the most open copyrights, allows modification of the content and even sale.  Many repositories  provide access to open textbooks through their websites. Several file formats are made available for open textbooks; typical formats are: HTML, Adobe PDF, and plain text.

Open textbooks "are textbooks that are freely available with nonrestrictive licenses. Covering a wide range of disciplines, open textbooks are available to download and print in various file formats from several web sites and OER repositories. Open textbooks can range from public domain books to existing textbooks to textbooks created specifically for OER. Open textbooks help solve the problems of the high cost of textbooks, book shortages, and access to textbooks as well as providing the capacity to better meet local teaching and learning needs" according to the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME).

Support

The Community College Open Textbook Collaborative seeks to support and promote the creation and use of high-quality, accessible, and culturally relevant open textbooks at low cost for community college students and faculty.  The project is an attempt to realize what visionaries have dreamed of for years: replacing traditional, static and costly textbooks with more dynamic, high-quality and customized texts that can be viewed for free on the Internet or professionally printed and bound at very low cost, as opposed to the 0-plus price tag of many traditional texts.  This opportunity represents enormous savings for the 11.5 million students enrolled in community colleges in the United States, for whom the cost of texts can be three-quarters the cost of tuition.  The high cost of textbooks presents a significant barrier to educational attainment for students. In response to this, the California State Auditor released a report in August of 2008 supporting the use of open educational resources (California State Auditor, 2008).  According to a student survey in the report, 34 percent of community college students took fewer units because of high textbook prices.

Opportunities

The opportunities represented by open textbooks are far greater than those of cost savings alone. Open textbooks permit instructors and authors to freely download, copy, share, reuse, annotate, and customize curriculum materials that are infinitely malleable and able to be distributed through multiple modalities (e.g., online, in print, via mobile environments, etc.).  

Users of open textbooks can access materials online, and/or order an affordable print-on-demand copy.  Because open texts reside online and are printed on demand, they can readily be edited and customized by professors to meet the needs of a particular class or even of a particular student. Customization offers enormous opportunity for making textbooks culturally relevant to the community college population, 35 percent of whom are members of minority groups and 39 percent of whom represent the first generation in their families to attend college. 
 

Enthusiasm for open textbooks is high among early adopters and technically oriented thought leaders in education, the same group that has embraced the decade-old distance learning movement. The open educational resources movement is global and growing, fueled by purposeful support and guidance from The Hewlett Foundation and a widely shared belief that open educational resources, made possible by the Internet, represents the best hope to extend education to people around the globe with few other opportunities.  Traditional copyright concerns have been eased by the dramatic growth of the Creative Commons intellectual property open licensing tool (http://creativecommons.org/), making it possible for authors, scientists and other creators of educational material to tag their work with the freedoms they want it to carry, from all rights reserved to some rights reserved thus easily allowing others to use it and repurpose it with proper attribution.   In addition, the collaborative nature of open textbooks makes it possible for top quality contributions to rise to the top, whether they are from faculty members, students or others. 

Passion for adoption of open textbooks has begun to ignite among college professors, the people who actually select the books that their students must buy and use. For open textbooks to thrive, these professors must not only choose them for their classes but become proactive participants in contributing and vetting text materials.   

In addition to lowering educational costs for students, open textbooks offer several advantages over traditional publishers’ textbooks that are often instructor-centric, inflexible, and irrelevant.  When used appropriately, open textbooks hold the promise of giving learners greater control over their learning experiences.  Digital textbooks with flexible modular content that is freely available under an open license allow both faculty and students to customize learning content to meet non-linear, interconnected, and personalized learning needs.   Open textbooks empower faculty to bring greater context and relevance to their instructional content by integrating with just-in-time and context-sensitive Internet linking and networking opportunities.

Open Licensing

Find out about open licensing using Creative Commons and MERLOT http://conference.merlot.org/2009/Friday/Reisman_S_Friday.ppt

Copyright

Although documents, pictures, audio and other information are all easy to copy from the Internet, it is your responsibility to understand and respect the laws that protect the author(s) of electronic information. The copyright laws that govern information in all formats are complex. It is impossible to reduce them to a few simple rules. We encourage you to visit the pages listed here. They have been prepared by legal and other experts on the subject of copyright and can help you learn to decide for yourself whether it is appropriate to use electronic information sources in your work.A basic understanding of copyright, fair use, the TEACH Act, and intellectual property is necessary before using and developing OER in order to minimize the risk of violating the law. 

Did you know that the copyright notice © is no longer required for works published after March 1989?  This means that the absence of a copyright notice does not necessarily mean the work is within the public domain. If you are unfamiliar with copyright issues, you are encouraged to visit one or more of the many online tutorials exist which address these topics.

Watch this video clip that addresses the challenges faced by faculty when distributing copyrighted material from various sources: The Case of Dr. No.

Many basic tutorials about copyright are available:

TEACH Act

http://www.utsystem.edu/OGC/IntellectualProperty/teachact.htm

If the open textbook content you have selected does not comply with ADA Section 508 accessibility requirements, then you will need to modify the content or select other content. 

Accessibility  

Certain accessibility requirements must be addressed when selecting and developing open textbooks for electronic dissemination to students at educational institutions that have received funding from the U.S. governement. By law, ADA Section 508, learning materials, including interfaces, images, sounds, multimedia elements, and all other forms of information, must be made available for used by anyone, regardless of disability. Detailed information about accessibility guidelines are available at Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Certain accessibility requirements must be addressed when developing open textbooks for electronic dissemination to students.  For example, see Distance Education: Access Guidelines for Students with Disabilities from the Chancellor’s Office California Community Colleges.

By law, ADA Section 508, learning materials, including interfaces, images, sounds, multimedia elements, and all other forms of information, must be made available for used by anyone, regardless of disability.  See this microtutorial about Section 508: http://21cif.imsa.edu/tutorials/micro/mm/508

Detailed information about accessibility guidelines are available at Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should I adopt an open textbook?

Open textbooks are more affordable than commercially available textbooks; this permits student education budgets to stretch further, thus giving students greater flexibility in their education choices. Furthermore, faculty can readily customize open textbooks to better meet their local teaching and learning needs. Open textbooks provide pricing, flexibility and customization advantages that commercially available textbooks currently do not provide, customize and update open textbooks.

How can I find high quality open textbooks?

High quality open textbooks are accessed from OER repositories on the Internet. Many such repositories exist. To download an open textbook, locate one from an OER repository or web site. For examples, see:

• WikiBooks
• WikiEducator
• Connexions
• CCCOER Open Content
• OER Commons
• MERLOT
• Orange Grove Text Plus
• Flat World Knowledge
• GSU
• Curriki
• CK12

What is the quality of open textbooks?

There is essentially no difference in the faculty vetting process carried out for open textbooks, compared to commercially published textbooks. As with all textbooks, open textbooks vary in quality. Faculty selection of open textbooks, as in the selection of commercial textbooks, is often a collaborative process driven by departmental faculty. Quality of a particular open textbook can be determined in several ways: 1) recommendations by faculty who have used the open textbook, 2) vetting by faculty reviewers, and 3) faculty use of review guidelines created to standardize the open textbook review process.  Some OER sites (e.g., Connexions) have a review system built in.

How can my students get a copy of the open textbook that I adopt?

Most open textbooks are available for viewing on a computer via the Internet or as a document that can be downloaded for off line viewing or printing by students. Faculty can provide their students with the webpage address where students can access the open textbook.  Alternatively, several print-on-demand services are available via the Internet that will provide students printed copies for a minimal fee. Additionally, campus bookstores and print-shops can provide printed copies of the open textbook for sale. Print-on-demand services will soon be available as well.

How can I develop my own open textbook?

Open textbook authors are no different than commercial textbook authors, with one exception. Open textbook authors share their knowledge with students freely in order to increase availability and significantly reduce cost to the student.

“Open textbook projects rely on volunteers who are committed to a vision of providing high-quality, freely available textbooks to the worldwide community of educators and learners. Most of the projects mentioned in this module have information on their site on how you can participate in their project.” (from OER Commons Tutorial)

Some open textbooks were originally commercial books whose copyright has run out or whose copyright was returned to the author who has put it under an open copyright.  Some authors were hired by a school or foundation to write open textbooks for some particular reason or group of students.  Any author writing an open textbook should consult Creative Commons.  Most authors use their attribution only or attribution-share-alike license.

How will the adoption of open textbooks impact faculty authors of textbooks that are for sale?

Overall, introduction of open textbooks can create more opportunity for faculty who wish to publish commercial material, because faculty who wish to write commercial (for sale) material will be able to leverage open content by providing commercial (for sale) addendums to that open content.

If the textbooks that are available for sale have a reasonable price, there will be little impact.  However, if you can buy a printed version of an open textbook for when the equivalent commercial version sells for 0, it will cause people to change.

Availability of open content and textbooks can potentially increase class enrollments by providing students with free (online) or low cost (print-on-demand) open content. Thus, students who have traditionally not been able to enroll in a course because the textbook cost is too high, will no longer encounter that barrier.

What will my students think about using an open textbook?

Students traditionally have a fair amount of discretion in using textbooks that are assigned to them by faculty; open textbooks do not change that equation.  Open textbooks will provide the same quality and variety of content as commercially available textbooks, with the additional advantage that open textbooks will be more easily customized by faculty (to meet localized education needs), more accessible to physically challenged populations, and available for sale to students for significantly less cost (free, or as low cost print versions) than commercially published textbooks.

It will make students think you care about their financial burden.  Several systems will allow the students to either use the open books in print form or on-line, giving much more flexibility.

Will my course transfer to other colleges and universities if I use an open textbook?

Articulation agreements between community colleges and universities generally do not include specific requirements about textbooks except to specify that the title or samples of the textbook should be included in the course outline.  Check with your campus articulation officer to determine if your articulation agreements prohibit the use of open textbooks or require only publishers’ textbooks. As open textbooks proliferate, colleges and universities will seamlessly include them in articulation agreements.

How will the adoption of open textbooks impact my campus bookstore?

Campus bookstores can profit from obtaining print copies of open textbooks and selling them just as they do for of publishers’ textbooks. Campus bookstores can profit from obtaining print copies of open textbooks
and selling them just as they do for of publishers’ textbooks but only if the open access copyright allows commercialization.   Many campus bookstores are already engaged in efforts to lower the cost of publishers’ textbook with rental programs and other innovative strategies. 

What are the disadvantages to using open textbooks?

Some disadvantages of OER include:

• Quality of available OER materials is inconsistent. However, this is also true of commercial textbooks, which vary widely in quality. As the number of open textbooks increases, there will be a concomitant increase in overall quality.
• Materials may not meet Section 508 ADA accessibility requirements and must be modify to bring into compliance. In fact, this is true of many commercial textbooks. Open textbooks will ultimately meet and exceed Section ADA accessibility requirements, as currently fulfilled on commercially available textbooks.
• Faculty need to check for accuracy of content of open content, just as they do with commercially available content.
• Customization may be necessary to match departmental and/or college curriculum requirements. However, customization of content will ultimately be more flexible in open content than it currently is in commercially available content.
• Technical requirements to access the content vary. Interoperability standards that permit transportability across many technology platforms are now in the making.

How will copyright/fair use be determined?  Who will be responsible?

Authors of OER make their own decisions about open licensing of their content. Several different open licensing options are available such as from Creative Commons and GNU General Public License Version 3. Ultimately, individual faculty members are responsible for understanding the guidelines for fair use. In general, the best practice is to use content that is either public domain or provided under an open license rather than relying on fair use provisions. By virtue of their open licenses, all OER and open textbooks are available without the need to be concerned about fair use.  See Faculty Essentials for more information about copyright and fair use.

Find Your Open Textbook

•  Remember: The book you select must be accessible to people with disabilities
• Be sure to check copyrights. Use books with permission, under creative commons or other open licensing, or public domain
  
• Go to repositories that provide open textbooks and search. Use advanced search options to narrow results.
• OER Commons: http://www.oercommons.org/
• OER Commons about Open Textbooks
• MERLOT: http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm
• Connexions: http://cnx.org/
• Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/details/education
• FREE?Federal Resources for Educational Excellence: http://www.free.ed.gov/
• COL Knowledge Finder: http://www.col.org/resources/crsMaterials/Pages/default.aspx
• Creative Commons: http://search.creativecommons.org/
• OpenDOAR: http://www.opendoar.org/find.php
• Curriki: http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome
• Hippocampus: http://www.hippocampus.org/
• Edu2.0: http://www.edu20.org/
• Wikibooks: http://en.wikibooks.org/
• The Assayer: http://theassayer.org/

Tools to Identify Open Textbooks

Several resources are available on the Internet that provide teachers with tools to identify and select OER for use in instruction. Some of these are: OER Commons, MERLOT, Connexions, FREE: Federal Resources for Educational Excellence, COL Knowledge Finder, and Creative Commons.

OER Commons

OER Commons is one of several Internet resources where you can identify and select OER. With a free membership, you can add tags, ratings, reviews, comments, and favorites to your own portfolio. You can post to discussion, blog, and wiki areas, and see how others are using OER.

OER Commons is created and produced by ISKME, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education. It is generously supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and represents dozens of collaborations with OER partners and communities across the globe.

MERLOT

MERLOT is a pioneer in the development of searchable and shareable online learning materials for higher education. The site provides collection of peer reviewed learning materials created by registered members. MERLOT provides criteria for peer-review of learning materials submitted.

Take a Tour of the new Merlot. Searches in MERLOT can be sorted by date, reviews ratings, title, author, and material type. A tutorial about how to search for learning materials using MERLOT is available from the SUNY Teaching, Learning, and Technology Program.

Connexions

Connexions has a repository of OER that are searchable by subject, language, popularity, title, keyword, and author.  The repository contains 3925 reusable modules woven into 211 collections. The content in Connexions comes in two formats: modules, which are like small "knowledge chunks," and courses, which are collections of modules. The Connexions Creative Commons open license allows for free use and reuse of all its content.

FREE

FREE: Federal Resources for Educational Excellence provides links to hundreds of education resources from or supported by the U.S. government.

OER Repositories

WikiEducator provides several tools for identification and use of OER including the Exemplary Collection of Open eLearning Content Repositories.

Lola Exchange  provides learning objects and learning activities available for searching by topic, title, discipline, or author.  Disciplines listed are Mathematics, Science and Technology, Social Sciences, Business, Arts, Education, and Humanities.  All materials are reviewed according to standard criteria by volunteers.

Curriki is a global education and learning community dedicated to providing quality learning materials worldwide.  Learning materials can be searched by the following topics:Arts, Educational Technology, Foreign Languages, Health, Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and Vocational Education. 

• Access information, tools, and resources from the new member home page.
• View and comment on other members' learning resources.
• Edit and collaborate on learning materials, and build collections and resources with Currikulum Builder.
• Develop content in the Currikulum Builder with templates.
• Manage your own contributions and collections, as well as your user profile and blog, using your personalized space in MyCurriki.

COL Knowledge Finder

COL Knowledge Finder is a service that searches reliable sources of information in open and distance learning and provides organization tools. Emphasis is on international development goals like poverty alleviation, health and education for all. The COL Knowledge Finder service is provided by The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) which is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning and distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. To use the search tool, click on "Search". Then follow the guidelines on the screen. More details are available from the Orientation. Training videos for effective searching and use of the COL Knowledge Finder tools are available.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons provides a way to find shareable photos, music, text, books, and other educational material utilizing Creative Commons enabled search services at Google, Yahoo!, Flickr, blip.tv, Owlmusic, and SpinXpress. A Content Curators wiki area is available that provides a list of curators of Creative Commons-licensed content. Users are invited to contribute to and edit this list themselves.

Activity

Experience

1. Go to OER Commons, MERLOT, Connexions, and FREE to search for content in your teaching discipline.
2. View the CNBC video interview with Scott McNealy about Curriki.

Reflect

Visit the OER Matters Discussions to read and post comments about the How and Why of OER:

"Share your thoughts, experiences and expertise on the OER movement, its challenges and potential impact. Why does OER matter, how does it work, and what are the possibilities for the future of use and re-use of open education content?"

Apply

If you know of a good source of open educational resources, submit the Internet address for inclusion on the COL Knowledge Finder submit-a-site page.

Review Questions

1. What are some of the repositories where OER can be located and reviewed?
2. What tools and features are available to identify and select OER?

Resources

• Exemplary Collection of Open eLearning Content Repositories
• Searching for Public Domain Materials on the Web
• Open Educational Practices and Resources. OLCOS Roadmap 2012

Open textbooks can be found at each of the following websites:

• 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
• Wikibooks
• CK12 Flexbooks
• Flat World Knowledge
• Public Literature
• Questia
• Audio Books

MERLOT

To find open textbooks at MERLOT, use Advanced Search.

Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources

A list of over 300 open textbooks are listed by discipline at the CCCOER website.

Global Text Project

Select Your Open Textbook

1. Review learning materials at OER Commons. Type keywords in the Search box in the upper right corner of the screen to identify at least one OER to review.

2.  Submit your review of some learning materials at MERLOT.  You will need to become a member before you can submit your review.

OER Commons developed a module that explains open licensing.  The module contains a some typical situations faced by faculty:

The philosophy of OER is based on the idea of sharing and re-using content. Because the restrictions of traditional copyright laws are not appropriate for new media and the culture that has grown around it, legal experts in the field of new media have pioneered alternative legal frameworks for sharing, reusing, and remixing content. Creative Commons has been in the forefront of this movement; their goal is “to build a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright in the face of increasingly restrictive default rules.”

For an overview of the limitations of the traditional copyright system, and how Creative Commons addresses these limitations, watch this short video called “Get Creative.”

When you submit materials to OER Commons to share with others, you be asked to choose a license for your work. During the materials submission process, you will be presented with three licensing options to choose from:

This module will provide a description of each licensing option; however, because OER Commons recommends the use of Creative Commons licensing, this module will primarily focus on Creative Commons.

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that provides a free alternative to the restrictions of the traditional copyright laws. Offering several licensing options, authors have the flexibility to decide how they want others to use their materials. Watch this short video, “Wanna Work Together?,” for an overview of why you would want to use Creative Commons licensing.

Using a Creative Commons license does not mean you are giving up rights to copyrighting your work. This short overview explains the four main licensing conditions and provides scenarios to illustrate how the licenses are used. To further understand Creative Commons licensing, read descriptions of the six main licenses.

Figure 1

Figure 1: Creative Commons comic defining the spectrum of possibilities for copyrighting material. From: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Spectrumofrights_Comic1

Before submitting your materials to OER Commons, and before deciding on a license, Creative Commons recommends you make sure that:

• a Creative Commons license can be applied to the type of work you want to license
• you understand how Creative Commons licenses operate
• you have the rights for the material
• you are specific about what you are licensing
• if you a member of a collecting society, you are allowed to use a Creative Commons license.

Read more about what Creative Commons has to say about the above recommendations.

After ensuring you can use a Creative Commons license for your material, you are ready to take the next step in licensing it. During the process of submitting your material to OER Commons, you will be asked two questions to help determine which license is most appropriate for your needs. Figure 2 is a visual representation of the Creative Commons licensing form. You will see this form during the process of submitting your material to OER Commons—it appears as a link on the OER Commons submission form.

Figure 2

Figure 2. Visual representation of the form you will see when you complete the OER Commons submission form.

Look at this example to see how a Creative Commons license is displayed for an item in OER Commons. On this page you will see an icon that represents the chosen Creative Commons license as well as a link to the license. In this instance the author chose theAttribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unportedlicense. Let’s break down what each of these words mean:

• Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
• Noncommerical: You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
• Share-Alike: If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.
• 3.0: the version of this license.
• Unported: the license has not been adapted for a local jurisdiction.

With this particular item, the author chose a license that allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the work as well as remix it, which means you can adapt the work for your own use.

If you’d like more information about Creative Commons’ Version 3 license, read a brief explanation by their General Counsel.

Using Others’ Work

Before using someone else’s material you found in OER Commons, check the material’s licensing. This information can be found on the item’s overview page in the section called “Conditions of Use.” A link to the license is provided; the license will describe how the material’s author has specified the way it can be used.

Sharing Your Work

Here is a recap of how to license material you created and want to share in OER Commons using a Creative Commons’ license:

1. Determine whether you can use a Creative Commons license for your work.
2. If necessary, replace or remove content that you do not have permission to use. Or get permission from the author(s) who hold the copyright.
3. Login to OER Commons and click on OER Matters. This will take you to the page where the submission forms are located.
4. Complete the submission form, and decide which Creative Commons license you would like to use. The top-level choice is the most current Creative Commons license. You can choose an older license by clicking on the + icon next to “show/hide other Creative Commons licenses.
5. After you click the “Save” button on the bottom of the submission form, the license you chose will be attached to the material you submitted.

To see the item you submitted with the license you chose, go to your OER Portfolio. You’ll need to be logged into OER Commons to view your portfolio. Once you are in your portfolio, click the link called “Items I have submitted.” Find the name of the item you submitted and click on its link. Look under “Conditions of Use” to see your license.

Establish some criteria by which you will select an open textbook appropriate for use in your course.

1.  Review learning materials at OER Commons. Type keywords in the Search box in the upper right corner of the screen to identify at least one OER to review.

2.  Submit your review of some learning materials at MERLOT.  You will need to become a member before you can submit your review. 

As noted by Todd Richmond at a DIY Media seminar at the Annenberg Center in 2006, the commons-based peer production or do-it-yourself shared media production aspect of OER may well be a catalyst for innovation once OER goes viral. Several resources are available on the Internet that provide teachers with tools to share and collaborate on the development of OER for use in instruction. Some of these are: Rice Connexions, Open Learning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS), WikiEducator, and WikiBooks.

Localization

Find out how to localize your open textbook from a tutorial developed by ISKME.

Accessibility

Certain accessibiilty requirements must be addressed when developing OER for electronic dissemination to students. By law, ADA Section 508, learning materials, including interfaces, images, sounds, multimedia elements, and all other forms of information, must be made available for used by anyone, regardless of disability. Detailed information about accessibility guidelines are available at Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). A-Prompt is an accessibility evaluation and repair tool from the University of Toronto in cooperation with the Trace Center and CAST. A demonstration version is available for download. A-Prompt lists what it considers to be errors and offers a chance to correct each one. Utah State University, Web Accessibility in Mind (Webaim) offers various "How To" information and support on creating accessible web sites. Web authors can find a Section checklist, sample HTML markup and various articles and courses on accessible web design. The Accessible Web Publishing Wizard simplifies the task of converting PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, and (in the future) Excel spreadsheets to accessible HTML through an easy-to-use user interface and automation of many of the details of conversion.

Suggested Peer-Review Criteria

See sample open textbook reviews based on the following criteria:

• Clarity and comprehensibility
  • content, including the instructions and exercises
• Accuracy
• Readability
  • in terms of logic, sequencing, and flow
• Consistency of course materials 
  • consistency in the content language and use of key terms as is necessary to facilitate understanding by novice users
• Appropriateness of content
  • appropriateness of the material for community college level courses
• Interface
  • technological issues such as broken links, improperly displayed graphics, and ease of navigation
• Content usefulness
  • the ways in which the content could be useful for teachers, students, and those with a general interest in the subject area
• Modularity
  • the ability to adapt, rearrange, add, delete and modify the content by sections
• Content errors
  • the presence or absence of factual errors, grammatical errors, and typographical errors in the content
• Reading level
  • appropriate for community college level students
• Cultural relevance
  • use of examples that are inclusive of diverse races and ethnicities

Dissemination

Disseminate your open textbook in either digital or print format to students in your course. 

PDF Version of Open Textbooks

Do-It-Yourself

Create a PDF of the open content that you have selected.

• Use Drawloop for creating PDF
• Use Connexions to create PDF
• Use Zamzar to create PDF

Email the PDF to your enrolled students. Or post the PDF to your students' course management system course site. If the PDF is too large to email or post, use a free online file storage or file sharing service

• Box.net
• BT Digital Vault
• Openomy Tour of Lulu

Students can download and print the PDF or simply view the PDF on their computers

Campus Printshop

Printing Services