BCcampus is actively looking for additional instructors to join the BC Open Textbook community to review newly identified textbooks either in the original 40 highest-enrolled subject areas, or in the targeted trades. Selected reviewers are paid an honorarium of $250 per textbook. All of their peer-reviewed open textbooks are rated against a review rubric to ensure consistency and quality. The rubric includes criteria for comprehensiveness, content accuracy, interface, relevance, clarity, grammar, consistency and organizational structure. Our 5-point rating system provides a quick at-a-glance overview of the quality and usability of the open textbook. Additional funding is available for faculty and instructors who wish to adapt a textbook for their own use or create a new one. Textbook adapters and creators receive in-kind institutional contributions that can include instructional design and graphic support, editing and help with online publishing platforms. The BCcampus Open Textbook Program community already includes more than 38 instructors and professors from post-secondary institutions around the province who reviewed existing open textbooks.
Category Archives: Open Textbooks
New BC Open Open Ed Chat Archive Available
The March 2014 BC Open Open Ed Chat archived recording is now available. It featured Paul Hibbitts and Novak Rogic who discussed technologies and platforms to support open learning. For background, see some of Paul Hibbitts’ course environments “designed in the open“, and 5 Questions with Novak Rogic on the impact of open publishing platforms and flexible learning.
A Faculty Perspective on Open Textbooks
Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani, a professor of psychology at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and chair of the Provincial Psychology Articulation Committee, explores reasons why most faculty are not yet adopting open textbooks. These reasons include that open textbook may not be available for many disciplines and courses; some faculty are skeptical of open textbook quality and hold them to a higher standard than traditional textbooks; there is a need for additional learning materials, such as associated test banks; and finally that the choice of textbook is sometimes not an individual’s decision. Jhangiani summarizes the advantages of open resources and highlights that “there is some evidence to suggest that when an open textbook is carefully adapted to suit a particular program, student performance and retention is actually enhanced.” He concludes, “Ultimately, I believe that it is institutional culture that will need to shift. A university’s strategic priorities need to include moving towards open education. From the president’s office down, open education initiatives need to be supported for these to develop and mature. This includes time releases for faculty adapting/adopting open textbooks, institutional recognition of this work, practical and regularly offered professional development workshops, and the consideration of the development of open educational resources in the files of those on the tenure-track.”
Link: http://jhangiani.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/a-faculty-perspective-on-open-textbooks/
The Future Of Online Education
Forbes recently published an interview with Richard Baraniuk, the founder and director of Connexions, a repository of open educational resources (OER) maintained by Rice University. In 2012, Connexions launched OpenStax College, a repository of peer-reviewed, professional grade open textbooks, which have been adopted by more than 400 institutions. According to Baraniuk, the biggest impacts of OER will be found in learning outcomes as OER becomes integrated with adaptive learning technologies that utilize machine learning algorithms. In Baraniuk’s vision of the future of education, “access to quality content and educational technology would be unfettered, the community would continuously improve and add to the knowledge base, and an ecosystem of products and services would provide an array of options and sustainability for the whole effort.”
Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/skollworldforum/2014/02/13/the-future-of-online-education/
BCcampus Launches Phase Three of the Open Textbook Project: Creation of New Texts
The BC Open Textbook Program, which is coordinated by BCcampus, has announced a new call for proposals from British Columbia faculty interesting in creating new open textbooks to round out their list of 40 highest-enrolled subject areas. Criteria for successful applications include: addressing one of the specific eligible subject areas, documenting any existing open educational resources to be used, exhibiting the characteristics of quality teaching and learning, and more. The deadline for proposals in February 28, 2014 and the deadline for completed projects is September 5, 2014. The goal of the BC Open Textbook Program is “to provide flexible and affordable access to higher education resources in B.C. by making available 40 openly licensed textbooks in the first and second year most highly enrolled undergraduate subject areas.”
Link: http://bccampus.ca/open-textbook-project/open-textbooks-call-for-proposals-phase-3/
Open Textbook Project Saves B.C. Students Over $40,000 in Initial Fall 2013 Phase
According to a BC Ministry of Advanced Education news release, BC’s Open Textbook Project “already has helped almost 300 post-secondary students, who saved an average of $146 each on their textbook costs for the fall 2013 semester.” In the first phase of the project, 15 existing open textbooks were peer-reviewed by BC faculty and made available for free download in September 2013. Individual instructors at Capilano University, Douglas College, the Justice Institute of British Columbia, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Langara College, and Northwest Community College used open textbooks in the Fall 2013 semester, bringing collective savings of over $43,000 to students.
Link: http://www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2014/01/students-saving-money-with-open-textbooks.html
U.S. Senators Offer Bill Promoting Open-Access Textbooks
Two U.S. Senators have introduced the Affordable College Textbook Act, a bill that would “encourage the creation of free online textbooks by offering grants for pilot projects that produce high-quality open-access textbooks, especially for courses with large enrolments.” Grant money would be available to help faculty find and review open textbooks, as well as to conduct research on how well open-access textbooks meet students’ and faculty members’ needs.
B.C. Open Textbooks Call for Proposals for Phase 2: Adapt, Localize or Extend
The B.C. Ministry of Advanced Education has announced the second phase of the B.C. Open Textbook Initiative with a call for proposals to adapt, localize or extend an existing open textbook. Adaptations can take many forms, including but not limited to, extending an existing open textbook by creating accompanying instructional resources such as presentation files and test questions, localizing an existing open textbook so that the examples used within it are appropriate for a Canadian context, or bringing together a number of existing open educational resources to create a single text. The deadline for submission is ongoing.
Link: https://bccampus.ca/open-textbook-project/open-textbooks-call-for-proposals-phase-2/
I’ve taken the pledge
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Yet another dose of goodness from David Kernohan, reproduced in full:
Every blog post I read, every tweeted link I see, every breathless gushing article about “tsunamis” and “disruption” I flick past is a nail in the coffin of rational and realistic debate about the way connected technology can support learning. Every sturm und drang keynote – every hyped-up sharp-suited Silicon Valley sales pitch takes us further and further away from the idea of people talking to each other, making stuff, and learning as they go.
And now, this October, it is time to take a stand. I am pledging to refrain from discussing, speculating and analysing the trend for the remainder of this month. On my blog, on twitter, in conversation. It is no longer anything to do with those who are interested in education and technology. It is a monster, and I refuse to be a part of the forces that are feeding it.
If you agree – join me. Celebrate #mooctober by writing about everything else in the education, technology, funding and policy world that catches your eye. But ignoring this one, glaringly overdone and over-hyped topic.
#MOOCtober 2012. End the madness.
(ps: #ds106isNotaMOOC – likewise #phonar )
For my part, I’ll add I have no particular argument against the cMOOC people, or Ed Startup 101 or a host of other open online course-like thingies that people are working on. Even the venture capitalized MOOCs prompt more bemusement and curiosity than fear and loathing for me at this point. And I’m afraid with the ongoing discourse and activities at TRU and OpenEd12 a week away there’s no way I’m going to be able to avoid conversing about MOOCs over the next few weeks.
But I am taking the #MOOCtober pledge as a means of countering the emerging notion that this form represents the sum total of innovation in higher education today. Or even the most significant innovation. As I’ve argued before, change is a multi-dimensional affair, and in my view the real action is elsewhere.
Two worthy examples, tweeted with the #MOOCtober tag yesterday by Scott Wilson:
- a three day Finnish hackathon using Github to create an open textbook.
- and I’ve been following Matterhorn for a while. But I don’t know if I’ve ever blogged about this noble, open source lecture capture and video management project.
Hopefully #MOOCtober will unearth a cornucopia of these under-discussed efforts, in which open online education innovation is practiced by a global networked community of practitioners. And hopefully I’ll pitch a few pointers in myself before the end of the month, when I expect this space to regress into lemming-like hypemongering.