The document summarizes the BC Open Textbook Project, which provides 40 free and open textbooks for the highest enrolled first and second year post-secondary subjects in British Columbia. The goals of the project are to increase access to higher education by reducing student costs, give faculty more control over instructional resources, and improve student learning outcomes. Faculty can customize and adapt open textbooks. Studies have found that open educational resources provide students with equal or better learning outcomes at lower costs. The project aims to continue developing open resources and engaging more post-secondary institutions in open textbook adoption and adaptation.
2. BC Open Textbook Project
40 free & open textbooks for highest
enrolled 1st & 2nd year post-secondary
subjects in BC
2013 – 20 for skills & training
First province in Canada
2013 – AB & SASK MOU
$1 million
2013 - $1 million
Visual notes of John Yap announcement, Giulia Forsythe Used under
CC-SA license
3. Why are we doing this project?
To increase access to higher education by reducing student costs
To give faculty more control over their instructional resources
To improve learning outcomes for students
Annie Lennox campaigns with Oxfam at the AIDS Conference by Oxfam used under CC-BY-NC-ND license
8. Reviews > Adaptations
My Adventures Adapting a Chemistry Textbook291/365 by thebarrowboy used under a CC-BY
9. Creative Commons logo by Creative Commons used under a CC-BY 3.0 License
CC license image from Copyright in Education & Internet in South African Law used under CC-BY 2.5 South Africa license
10. Faculty have full legal right to
customize & contextualize open
textbooks to fit their pedagogical
needs
12. • Make and own a copyRetain
• Use in a wide range of waysReuse
• Adapt, modify, and improveRevise
• Combine two or moreRemix
• Share with othersRedistribute
The 5Rs
16. “My textbook is…
…back-ordered
…in the mail
…out of stock
…the wrong edition
…on hold until my student loan arrives
…not needed until I decide I want this course”
How often do students start the term
without the resources they need?
17. Faculty have:
Right to customize
The textbook
Students have:
Day 1 access to that
customized textbook and
CHOICE
+
26. Looking ahead in 2016…
1. Build institutional capacity to enable support for faculty adoption of
open textbooks.
2. Produce 50 additional OER resources over the next 3 years, through
ancillary resources, open textbooks, openly licensed guides and
materials.
3. Engage with the BC post-secondary system to increase commitment to
adopt and adapt open textbooks.
4. Facilitate provincial, national, and international leadership and
collaboration in OER.
5. Ensure the sustainability of the collection.
Opening Slide of presentation – introducing Open Textbook Project
The BC Open Textbook Project is the Ministry of Advanced Education’s response to a number of the issues of student debt and restricted access. The Open Textbook project was first announced in 2012 at the Open Education Conference in Vancouver, by the then minister of advanced education, John Yap. He announced that the BC Provincial Government would provide the funding of $1 million in the creation of 40 open textbooks for the highest enrolled post-secondary subject areas in BC. In 2013 the government announced that another $1 million would be provided to develop 20 open textbooks for skills and training, in alignment with the BC Jobs Plan.
There are three main reasons that propel BCcampus’s drive for open education and in particular in the open textbook project. To increase access to higher education by reducing students, to give faculty more control over their instructional resources, and to improve learning outcomes for students.
At the start of the project in 2012, BCcampus did an inventory of the highest enrolled subject areas at BC post-secondary institutions. Many established open education projects had already created and adapted open educational resources and open textbooks in some of these areas, so rather than start from scratch by creating new textbooks BCcampus decided to adopt open textbooks that already existed and had a proven track record of high quality and widely adopted materials.
Some of the adoptions came from OpenStax College out of Rice University, OER Commons, the Open Textbook Library out of Minnesota, and Merlot repositories.
BCcampus then posted these open textbooks in their collection and began to solicit reviews from BC faculty. Faculty were to review a book’s comprehensiveness, content accuracy, relevance, clarity, consistency and modularity. Each review was then posted with the open textbook in the collection. As you can see these reviews are open because they are posted along with the reviewer’s name and which institution he or she is affiliated with. Also each review is released under a CC-BY-ND license. ND (non-derivative) was added as a condition to the Creative Commons license to ensure the reviews could not be changed.
From the reviews BCcampus then put out a call for proposals for faculty to adapt the textbook based on the reviews. They wanted to ensure that whatever was missing or lacking from a textbook in the collection that it was then adapted to meet the needs of BC Faculty. In some cases the reviews indicated that the books were too US centric, or that some of the chapters were not relevant for the BC context. Being able to adapt a textbook to meet specific learning outcomes, that is the power of working in the Open. The faculty had the opportunity to change the textbook. Here is one example of an adaptation- Professor Jessie Key at VIU adapted the Introductory Chemistry book based on the reviews submitted.
Because of the Creative Commons license associated with open textbooks,
Faculty have the full legal right to customize and contextualize open textbooks to fit their pedagogical needs. This then makes the resources pedagogically stronger
So what does it mean for a resource to be open, it does mean that it is free, but it also means it has certain permissions attributed to that resource that allow …
One to retain (make and own a copy,
Reuse (use in a wide range of ways)
Revise (adapt, modify, and improve)
Remix (combine two or more)
Redistribute (share with others)
All of the BC open textbooks are created using the online platform called Pressbooks, which is based on the Wordpress platform. Pressbooks allows the books to be written in one format and then published in a variety of outputs such as EPUB, PDF, MOBI, XML, etc.
The benefit of multiple formats is that it means that students can choose the platform that they want to use when reading the book. It also means that when faculty adapt the textbook they have a number of format options available to make those edits.
Another benefit of open textbooks is access to the resource on Day 1.
Too often we have heard from students that the textbook is the wrong edition, that it is on hold until their student loan arrives, or the book is out of stock. It makes you wonder how often do our students start the term without the resources they need?
Open means that faculty have the right to customize the textbooks and that students have both the CHOICE of how they want to access the book and of course having access to the book on day 1.
There are a number of studies that highlight the proven quality and efficacy of open educational resources. One result in particular, and most recent, highlights just this. Across eleven academic studies that attempted to measure results pertaining to student learning (with 48,623 students participated) none showed results in which students who utilized OER performed worse than their peers who used traditional textbooks.
Allen, G., Guzman-Alvarez, A., Molinaro, M., Larsen, D. (2015). Assessing the Impact and Efficacy of the Open-Access ChemWiki Textbook Project. Educause Learning Initiative Brief, January 2015. See also this newsletter. Bowen, W. G., Chingos, M. M., Lack, K. A., & Nygren, T. I. (2012). Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities: Evidence from Randomized Trials. Ithaka S+R. Bowen, W. G., Chingos, M. M., Lack, K. A., & Nygren, T. I. (2014). Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities: Evidence from a Six‐Campus Randomized Trial. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 33(1), 94-111. Feldstein, A., Martin, M., Hudson, A., Warren, K., Hilton, J., & Wiley, D. (2012). Open textbooks and increased student access and outcomes. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning. Retrieved from http://www.eurodl.org/index.php?p=archives&year=2012&halfyear=2&article=533. Gil, P., Candelas, F., Jara, C., Garcia, G., Torres, F (2013). Web-based OERs in Computer Networks. International Journal of Engineering Education, 29(6), 1537-1550. (OA preprint) Hilton, J., Gaudet, D., Clark, P., Robinson, J., & Wiley, D. (2013). The adoption of open educational resources by one community college math department. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 14(4), 37–50. Hilton, J., & Laman, C. (2012). One college’s use of an open psychology textbook. Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning, 27(3), 201–217. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02680513.2012.716657. (Open Repository Preprint). Lovett, M., Meyer, O., & Thille, C. (2008). The open learning initiative: Measuring the effectiveness of the OLI statistics course in accelerating student learning. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2008 (1). Pawlyshyn, Braddlee, Casper and Miller (2013). Adopting OER: A Case Study of Cross-Institutional Collaboration and Innovation. Educause Review. Robinson, T.J. (2015). Open Textbooks: The Effects of Open Educational Resource Adoption on Measures of Post-secondary Student Success (Doctoral dissertation). Robinson T. J., Fischer, L., Wiley, D. A., & Hilton, J. (2014). The impact of open textbooks on secondary science learning outcomes. Educational Researcher, 43(7): 341-351. Wiley, D., Hilton, J. Ellington, S., and Hall, T. (2012). “A preliminary examination of the cost savings and learning impacts of using open textbooks in middle and high school science classes.” International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. 13 (3), pp. 261-276.
Almost 50, 000 students participating in eleven studies…
…where 93% experienced the same or better outcomes when assigned open educational resources, such as open textbooks.
In terms of student and teacher perceptions of OER, 2,366 students and 2,144 faculty members were surveyed across the nine peer-reviewed studies. Approximately 50% said that the OER resources were as good as traditional resources, 35% said the OER were superior and 15% said they were inferior.
Allen, I., Seaman, J. (2014). Opening the Curriculum: Open Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2014. Bliss, T., Robinson, T. J., Hilton, J., & Wiley, D. (2013). An OER COUP: College teacher and student perceptions of Open Educational Resources. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1–25. Bliss, T., Hilton, J., Wiley, D., Thanos, K. (2013). The cost and quality of open textbooks: Perceptions of community college faculty and students. First Monday, 18:1. Feldstein, A., Martin, M., Hudson, A., Warren, K., Hilton, J., & Wiley, D. (2012). Open textbooks and increased student access and outcomes. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning. Retrieved from http://www.eurodl.org/index.php?p=archives&year=2012&halfyear=2&article=533. Gil, P., Candelas, F., Jara, C., Garcia, G., Torres, F (2013). Web-based OERs in Computer Networks. International Journal of Engineering Education, 29(6), 1537-1550. (OA preprint). Hilton, J., Gaudet, D., Clark, P., Robinson, J., & Wiley, D. (2013). The adoption of open educational resources by one community college math department. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 14(4), 37–50. Lindshield, B., & Adhikari, K. (2013). Online and campus college students like using an open educational resource instead of a traditional textbook. Journal of Online Learning & Teaching, 9(1), 1–7. Petrides, L., Jimes, C., Middleton‐Detzner, C., Walling, J., & Weiss, S. (2011). Open textbook adoption and use: Implications for teachers and learners. Open learning, 26(1), 39-49, Pitt, R., Ebrahimi, N., McAndrew, P., & Coughlan, T. (2013). Assessing OER impact across organisations and learners: experiences from the Bridge to Success project. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2013(3).
In terms of student and teacher perceptions of OER, 2,366 students and 2,144 faculty members were surveyed across the nine peer-reviewed studies. Approximately 50% said that the OER resources were as good as traditional resources, 35% said the OER were superior and 15% said they were inferior.
Allen, I., Seaman, J. (2014). Opening the Curriculum: Open Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2014. Bliss, T., Robinson, T. J., Hilton, J., & Wiley, D. (2013). An OER COUP: College teacher and student perceptions of Open Educational Resources. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1–25. Bliss, T., Hilton, J., Wiley, D., Thanos, K. (2013). The cost and quality of open textbooks: Perceptions of community college faculty and students. First Monday, 18:1. Feldstein, A., Martin, M., Hudson, A., Warren, K., Hilton, J., & Wiley, D. (2012). Open textbooks and increased student access and outcomes. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning. Retrieved from http://www.eurodl.org/index.php?p=archives&year=2012&halfyear=2&article=533. Gil, P., Candelas, F., Jara, C., Garcia, G., Torres, F (2013). Web-based OERs in Computer Networks. International Journal of Engineering Education, 29(6), 1537-1550. (OA preprint). Hilton, J., Gaudet, D., Clark, P., Robinson, J., & Wiley, D. (2013). The adoption of open educational resources by one community college math department. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 14(4), 37–50. Lindshield, B., & Adhikari, K. (2013). Online and campus college students like using an open educational resource instead of a traditional textbook. Journal of Online Learning & Teaching, 9(1), 1–7. Petrides, L., Jimes, C., Middleton‐Detzner, C., Walling, J., & Weiss, S. (2011). Open textbook adoption and use: Implications for teachers and learners. Open learning, 26(1), 39-49, Pitt, R., Ebrahimi, N., McAndrew, P., & Coughlan, T. (2013). Assessing OER impact across organisations and learners: experiences from the Bridge to Success project. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2013(3).
person icon by Ferran Brown from the Noun Project
Please insert slides that would pertain to your discipline – describing YOUR experience of the Open Materials.
As BCcampus looks ahead into the future of open in 2016, this is the direction they are going. They want to:
Build institutional capacity to enable support for faculty adoption of open textbooks
Produce 50 additional OER resources over the next 3 years through ancillary resources, open textbooks, open licensed guides and materials.
Engage with the BC post-secondary system to increase commitment to adopt and adapt open textbooks.
Facilitate provincial, national, and international leadership and collaboration in OER
Ensure the sustainability of the collection.
For anyone writing or adapting an open textbooks, we have an authoring guide and accessibility toolkit available: free, online and openly licensed.
Let Bccampus know if you have adopted an open textbook by filling out the Adoption of an Open Textbook form.
To find our collection of open textbooks you can go to open.bccampus.ca and should you have any follow up questions after today I would be happy for you to contact me. Thank you.