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Crafting Open Textbooks: A Collaborative Journey of Innovation

David Lippman shares insights on developing affordable open textbooks for math courses, highlighting challenges, benefits, and collaborative strategies for effective authoring and distribution. Learn about license selection, versioning, and fostering usability in open educational resources.

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Crafting Open Textbooks: A Collaborative Journey of Innovation

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  1. Another Perspective on Authoring an Open Textbook David Lippman Pierce College Ft Steilacoom

  2. Why did I write an open textbook? • Terminal math course for liberal arts majors and professional-technical degrees • Book was over $100 • New editions every 3 years • Is a topics course, nicely modular • Had been toying with idea for a while David Lippman - WA SBCTC Webinar

  3. Guided by looking at open texts • Lots of “books” read like lecture notes or were brief summaries. Wanted something that felt complete. • Efforts to make books super-open have led to aesthetically bland books. Opted for an editable word processing format. • If using the book will require work (like format conversion), only true evangelizers will use it. • Math is particularly challenging. David Lippman - WA SBCTC Webinar

  4. Development: Beginning • Spring: Started writing a couple chapters • Got offered for some grant money • Wrote enough chapters for my online class • Summer: Applied for and received some more grant money to write more chapters, and pay others to write a few chapters David Lippman - WA SBCTC Webinar

  5. Development: Student Editors • Summer: Used my preliminary draft with my online class • Put up an extra credit “Typos forum”: one point per typo found. Served as errata list, and turned a negative into a positive David Lippman - WA SBCTC Webinar

  6. Development: Current • Fall: Added chapters finished in the summer • Posted book on college website • Printed copy available on Lulu.com ($10) • Announced to Community College Open Textbook Project • They cross-listed it all over the place David Lippman - WA SBCTC Webinar

  7. Bookstore Fun • Bookstore didn’t want to order from print-on-demand because they couldn’t return product • Ended up going with print services loose sheet copies for Fall • Found some money to buy a class set for library checkout • Still haven’t figured out a long-term solution. David Lippman - WA SBCTC Webinar

  8. Thoughts on Openness • To make adoptable products, can’t sacrifice usability for openness. • It is essential to provide an easily editable format to ensure easy remixing. • Online remixing platforms are slick and cool, but don’t always transition formats well yet. • It is essential that open textbooks be useable in a printed format. • Non-commercial license make printing and distribution horribly difficult. That’s bad. David Lippman - WA SBCTC Webinar

  9. Thoughts on Collaboration • Remember not everyone is going to instantly share your passion • Nice to have a primary editor to edit contributions for consistency • Ensure license compatibility before drawing in content from other sources David Lippman - WA SBCTC Webinar

  10. Thoughts on Versioning • Unlike publisher books, users are never forced into new editions • Nice to distinguish major changes and changes affecting page or exercise numbers from typo corrections David Lippman - WA SBCTC Webinar

  11. Thoughts on License Selection • Non-commercial licenses: Make printing too complicated. Avoid them. • No-derivatives license: Not really open. • Two schools of thought: • CC-BY: Most permissive license, so some consider the “most open”. Advocated by Connexions, Gates, Hewlett, etc. • CC-BY-SA/GNU-FDL: These licenses require remixes to be released under the same license. Propagates openness. David Lippman - WA SBCTC Webinar

  12. Thoughts on License Selection My choice: CC-BY-SA “Sharealike” • Familiar from my background in open source software with the GNU GPL • Ensures improvements are open • Should be sufficient to curb undesired commercial use • Compatible with Wikipedia content David Lippman - WA SBCTC Webinar

  13. Conclusion • Exciting journey • Came together pretty quickly • I will be saving my students about $10,000 this year alone • If you write a book, think carefully about license and format • dlippman@pierce.ctc.edu • http://www.pierce.ctc.edu/dlippman David Lippman - WA SBCTC Webinar

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