Sharing course/textbook examples

[Amy Hofer]

Hi all, 

I'm looking for examples of how people have shared both an open textbook that they authored, and an open course that they designed to go with it. 

For an example of what I'm not looking for, this is an example of an open course shell where all the content is in the course (no textbook): https://bluecc.instructure.com/courses/10644. And this is an example of an open course shell that adopts an existing open textbook: https://bluecc.instructure.com/courses/5279

What I hope to find is projects where an open textbook and full course are both newly created and shared as a package. What kinds of pedagogical elements go where? How do you make sure that all the materials are cross-linked? How do you share this with faculty without confusing people?

Thanks in advance for any insight :)

Amy

--

Amy Hofer (she/her)

Statewide Open Education Program Director

Open Oregon Educational Resources

Schedule a meeting with me

[Amy Hofer]

Hi all, thank you for the thoughtful and helpful replies to this question! The roundup is below. :) Amy

- I've been happily using Introduction to College Research by Butler, Sargent and Smith, created under the auspices of the ASCCC OERI (thanks, OERI!!). A "Note for Instructors"in the book in Pressbooks refers instructors to a course shell in Canvas Commons. I've found it very clear and simple to use. I use selections from both the book and the Canvas shell in a research class, even though my institution's LMS is Brightspace.

- I’ve seen examples of Pressbooks titles that include ancillary resources within them (like this one with a Faculty Resource section: https://library.achievingthedream.org/austinccusgovernment/). I do like how clearly visible this is! You don’t have to read the part of the book that explains how to find these ancillaries to know they are available.

- Textbook in LibreText: https://stats.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_Statistics/Support_Course_for_Elementary_Statistics. Course in Canvas Commons: https://lor.instructure.com/resources/66fe56d017a7428da18bb50598cd4e6a?shared (you can also search for it by typing in Math Preparation for Statistics. A couple of my colleagues and I also created a collection of homework assignments using MyOpenMath with course ID 48619. 

The MyOpenMath questions link to the textbook and is also LTI'd into the Canvas Course.  The canvas course links to the textbook too.

- I authored the open textbook World Regional Geography (https://worldgeo.pressbooks.com/) as well as an open Canvas course for the class based on the open textbook: https://lor.instructure.com/resources/2569e9ec73da4db88f2f8ee349f492c7?shared. I just provide instructors with the link to the Canvas course if they’re using Canvas. Since the book is open, instructors don’t need to contact me to use it so they usually just email me to say they’re using it and then I can help them with any materials they might need.

- The book I use for my Information Security class is authored in Google Docs, which made sharing it via Google Sites pretty easy:

https://www.opencompsci.com/#h.p__2vO1LKfr3Nd. You can see the book and the lab manual there. Before I make the course available, I need to finish the book (goal for this semester). I found Google Sites very easy to use. 

- Pressbooks can export a (Thin) Common Cartridge with weblinks. Basically a zip file with external links to all of the Pressbooks content in a given book. If you use our LTI plugin, you can also generate Common Cartridge files with LTI links, which are even nicer. See this short video (starting around :24 seconds and running until 3:20 or so) https://youtu.be/7tqL-9z_fFA?t=24. You could of course combine this with a Common Cartridge from a Canvas course that had other elements of an open course (like quizzes, discussion forums, assignments, etc).