Top 10 Reasons to Host your Book on Runestone Academy

[Rob Beezer]

[Ed. Available to redistribute at https://blog.runestone.academy]

After four years of collaboration, Runestone and PreTeXt are ready to
*encourage* hosting PreTeXt books on Runestone servers as a routine matter.
We've got several months before fall classes, so now is a good time.

The process is quite simple: put your PreTeXt source on GitHub if it is not
there already, and provide a publisher file that specifies that you want a build
specifically for Runestone servers. If you are using the CLI then you are in
good shape. Let Runestone know. Your book will be made available to thousands of
instructors and will be re-built automatically every Saturday.

Here's our Top 10 list for why you would want to consider this, numbered for
mathematicians and for computer scientists.

0. Free. In every sense of the word. Open-source software and texts, hosting
free to instructors and students.

1. Hosting is low-friction for instructors, no local IT required. Fantastic up-time.

2. Weekly updating with no hassle. Or more frequently with the author interface.

3. Runestone Academy had over 115 million page views last year and has good
search-engine optimization to increase the exposure of your book.

4. Instructors get a detailed dashboard of students' work and progress.

5. Runestone Academy is used by over 10,000 instructors--who already use OER and
are happy to spread the word.

6. Authors get gross analytics across all institutions. Which of your exercises
work, and which don't?

7. Authors get accurate data on adoptions and readership. Impress your Dean.

8. You maintain complete ownership and control of your materials.

9. Instructors get autograding and autorecording. Get a spreadsheet at any time
or link it to your LMS through LTI.

10. PreTeXt and Runestone are actively promoting books at both Mathematics and
Computer Science conferences.

To get started, read the chapter on Runestone in the Publisher's part of the
Guide, especially the second section. It has pointers to other relevant parts of
the documentation.

Chapter 32: Conversion to Runestone
https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/runestone.html

We would encourage you to look at the annotated sample book, especially the
Runestone chapter to see the interactive elements that you can begin using in
your books, written natively in PreTeXt but using Javascript developed by
Runestone over the last 12 years. See
https://pretextbook.org/examples/sample-book/annotated/rune.html

There is a fast-developing converter from Runestone restructuredText syntax to
PreTeXt, which will ease the transition for computer science textbooks to PreTeXt.

We would be remiss to not acknowledge the trailblazers who have helped test this
out as it has been developed.

Native PreTeXt:
Oscar Levin; Discrete Mathematics, An Open Introduction
Sean Fitzpatrick; APEX Calculus
Mike May; Business Calculus with Excel
Alex Jordan; Open Resources for Community College Algebra
Kathy Yoshiwara; Intermediate Algebra: Functions and Graphs
Tom Judson; Abstract Algebra, Theory and Applications
Tom Judson; The Ordinary Differential Equations Project
Alex Jordan; WeBWorK integration (!)
Matt Boelkins, Mitch Keller, Chrissy Safranski; Active Calculus
Steven Clontz, Drew Lewis; Linear Algebra for Team-Based Inquiry Learning
Rob Beezer; A First Course in Linear Algebra

Conversions from Native Runestone:
Brad Miller; How to Think Like a Computer Scientist
Brad Miller; Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures using Python
Brad Miller, Barb Ericson, J. David Eisenberg; Python for Everybody
Beryl Hoffman; Java, Java, Java (from LaTeX!)
Jan Pearce; Problem Solving with Data Structures and Algorithms using C++
Jan Pearce; C++ for Python Programmers
Jan Pearce; On Complexity

[Rob Beezer]

An update on hosting your project on Runestone. Your book will be placed in the
Runestone library, put on a shelf, and a blurb will be associated with your book.

Please, please, please, set your shelf to "Mathematics" (capital "M"). Right
now we have several variants and it is a bit of a mess. We can discuss later if
we should carve up mathematics into sub-genres. And a blurb will only help
promote your book.

For details on where this goes in your source, see the fourth bullet point at:

Section 32.2: Publishing to Runestone Academy
https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/sec-publishing-to-runestone-academy.html

Rob