The Mount Library has access to Pressbooks--an open textbook publishing software--through our membership with the Council of Atlantic Academic Libraries (CAAL-CBPA), which recently launched the Atlantic Region Open Textbook Repository. Pressbooks allows authors to create and publish texts from scratch and integrates interactive tools like H5P, MathJax, Hypothesis, and more. Authors can also clone existing textbooks and then adapt them to suit their teaching needs (e.g. create a Canadian edition of a text).
For more information, please see the Atlantic Region Open Textbook Repository FAQs below. To set up a Pressbooks account, contact Nicole Slipp at Nicole.Slipp@msvu.ca
It is a textbook released with an open-copyright licence and made available online and in a variety of file types to be freely used by students, teachers, and members of the public.
Most studies have found equal or improved student outcomes. A summary of current research on the impact of OER can be found at the OER Research Hub.
Open textbooks are developed and reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality and most are vetted through a traditional peer review process. Here is an example of a book record that includes a peer review.
Through the Atlantic Open Educational Resources (Atlantic OER) initiative, CAAL-CBPA provides access to Pressbooks, a digital authoring and publishing platform that enables educators to create/adapt open textbooks for their courses.
Yes, each book, chapter, and section has a permanent, customizable link that can be added to any LMS.
Yes, Pressbooks supports integration with many plugins (Hypothesis, MathJax, TablePress), the creation of interactive content through H5P, and tracking of usage through Google Analytics.
Pressbooks uses learning tools interoperability (LTI) to enable users to embed Pressbooks content within an LMS interface in Canvas and Moodle and have it appear natively. This is an optional add-on for each institution.
Yes! Working with others to create a common textbook that you all use for your courses is one of the great benefits of the open textbook model. You can have an unlimited number of collaborators working on a common textbook using Pressbooks.
Creative Commons licenses are customizable copyright licenses that work alongside copyright law to give explicit permission for users to reuse items under specific circumstances. Applying a Creative Commons license to your work changes the familiar "All rights reserved" to "Some rights reserved," with explicit rules about what can and cannot be done with the item.
Open textbooks are licensed to allow reuse and revision. Terms of the licenses will vary so be sure to read the license thoroughly.
Most open textbooks can be downloaded as a PDF and printed with a standard desktop printer. Educators can also connect their book to a commercial printing service or use the printing services at their institution.
Accessing an open textbook online is free and students can also print pages or chapters on their own. If students would like to order a complete printed copy there is a nominal cost.
The webbook interface is built to be responsive to all screen sizes: mobile, desktop, or tablet. The design includes several features to help readers as they work through the text.
Yes! Look for more information soon about incentivization grants for individuals and group sprints.
Each institution has a designated contact for support; for the Mount, it's Librarian Nicole Slipp. CAAL-CBPA is also developing an OER Toolkit (guides, videos, webinars, etc.), as well as grants to support individuals and group sprints.
FAQs adapted in part from SPARC's FAQ: Open Educational Resources (CC-BY), the Open Textbook Library’s FAQ, BCcampus Open Education Adaptation Guide (CC-BY), BCcampus Open Education Self-Publishing Guide (CC-BY), & eCampus Ontario’s Open Textbook Library FAQ. Atlantic Region Open Textbook Repository FAQ is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.