Estimated reading time for this article:
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Watch the video recording of this session or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.
Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please contact Tonia.
Speaker:
Karen: Well, welcome everybody to Pub101. This is an orientation to publishing open textbooks, and we are very glad that you are here. This is an initiative of the Open Education Network. We're a community of people working together to make higher education more open. And again, we're really glad that you could join us today. These are difficult and busy times and we know that you are short possibly in both time and energy. So we will try and make the most of the time we've set aside together.
My name is Karen Lauritsen. I'm Senior Director, Publishing, with the Open Education Network. Many of you have already started to introduce yourselves in the chat. Please continue. It's great to know where you're coming in from. Something fun about you or something you'd like to share that may or may not be related to work is also welcome.
I would like to introduce the Pub101 committee. This is a group of people who are really dedicated to ensuring that this is a meaningful experience for you. We have revised the seven sessions that you're going to experience, made some big changes since last year, got rid of some old sessions, are hosting new ones for the first time. And so they'll be saying hello to you in the chat. And I would really like to thank and acknowledge them for the time that they have spent on this program for you.
I would also like to welcome two new committee members who are joining us for this experience in Pub101 and will be officially joining the committee as soon as we wrap up these seven weeks. So thank you to Carmen and Christine.
One of the things, this is just an FYI that we will be working on once we're finished with our time together, is adapting this experience for your faculty. So as we go along, if you're thinking this is really overwhelming, I can't imagine introducing some of these concepts to my faculty, it would be really helpful if there were a program like this for them. Great. We would love to hear your input and your feedback. We hope that you would consider inviting your faculty to a foundation setting experience like Pub101. And then, of course, we wouldn't be able to speak to the specifics of your program at your institution. We would leave that to you, but we would hope to take some of that load off of your plates.
Okay, in terms of our time together today, I'm going to introduce a little bit more about the Open Education Network. I know that many of you probably received this invitation forwarded from your consortial lead. This might be your first experience with the OEN. And so I just want to explain a little bit about who we are. I will also talk about what to expect with Pub101. And then I will briefly go over two different publishing approaches that are pretty common in the open textbook and OER publishing space. Those generally help us organize our thinking around what kind of approach we might offer, what kind of services to make available to faculty based on your resources and capacity. So that's what it looks like for us today.
So the Open Education Network is based at the University of Minnesota. We are a community of people working together. And together, those people represent more than 1800 institutions, primarily in the United States, but also in Canada and Europe and Australia. And essentially what we do is share strategies, support, and resources with one another so that nobody has to feel isolated, ideally, or that they have to start from scratch and figure something out. There are a lot of people who've come before you and they're excited and willing to share their experience and their resources with you to adapt.
One thing that the Open Education Network offers that you may be familiar with is the Open Textbook Library. We manage that and make sure that it is a comprehensive repository of open textbooks that come from all over the country, all over the world. We also offer certificate programs and other stuff, but this is a snapshot of the OEN and who we are and what we like to do in concert with all of you.
We are also organized around guiding principles, which you can read more about on our website. The one that I would really like to highlight here today is humanity. We are here to share in our humanity. And in addition to being people with jobs and who have work to do and performance evaluations annually, we are also people who have dogs, who enjoy gardening, who have families and friends. And so we try to take that whole picture into account when we talk about work. Especially when it comes to publishing. For whatever reason, publishing can be pretty emotional, kind of a heavy lift. And so we're just here to remind you that if you struggle, you are not alone, and we see you and are with you and want to help you in your efforts. All of these other principles are really grounding and help guide us in our work, especially as times change and we approach new technologies and new environments.
Thinking about these principles and how we're applying them to Pub101 today and for the next seven weeks together, we are creating an environment in which we can learn, share, connect, and even have a little fun together. And we ask that everyone participate in an authentic, constructive, and active way and be considerate and respectful in our speech and actions. I am sure this will be the case, and look forward to getting to know all of you in this environment.
Okay, so what is Pub 101? Well, it's a friendly, informal orientation to publishing open textbooks. We do focus on open textbooks because of that connection to the Open Textbook Library. However, you can certainly extrapolate what we share today to apply to other OER and other publishing. What we're going to do is really ask a lot of questions to help you consider your local vision and capacity to do this work. And you might be here saying, we do not have any capacity to do this work at this time. And that's totally fine. You're welcome to simply sit in, join us, listen, consider. And there's no expectation that you will take on something that you may not have the resources to do.
Speaking of resources, we will highlight the resources that are available should you decide to publish open textbooks. We will help you anticipate common issues. You'll hear both success stories and sad stories or difficult stories of things that people tried that didn't go so well. And so we'll help you anticipate these things that are often pretty common. We're going to help you lay the foundation for an OER publishing program regardless of the tool you might be using. So we're not going to talk about the specifics of Pressbooks or Manifold or PubPub or other publishing tools. We're going to talk about more foundational, fundamental sort of structural stuff and then leave the publishing platform specifics to other opportunities and programs.
And then we're also going to support you in taking care of yourself in this work. Pub101 is low key. This is not a class. There are no grades. Come when you can. And truly, this is an evolving experience. And so if you get to the end of Pub101 and you say, you know what would have been really helpful? Let us know. We might be able to create a resource or a program that would evolve so that it can support you where you are right now. And Pub101 is also a beginning. Many of you may know each other, but many of you probably haven't met each other. And so this is really the beginning of creating a community and knowing who you can turn to if you have questions or just need someone to complain to or celebrate with.
So here is a snapshot of Pub101. Today is March 26th and you are now currently at the kick-off. Next week, we will talk about how to work with authors. And then we will talk about developing a textbook. How do you put a textbook together? What makes a textbook? How do you guide an author in that type of development? This is a brand new session and we're looking forward to sharing it with you. On April 16th, we'll talk about creating inclusion. How can a book reach the most students that the faculty member wants it to? How can it speak to the local environment. We're also going to talk about how to make textbooks accessible. This is especially top of mind with new changes to the ADA starting in 2026. And so we're going to talk about some of the specifics and what you can do to ensure accessibility.
We have a session on calls for proposals and memorandums of understanding, or CFP and MOU for short. And we're going to talk about how those complement each other, how your call for proposals is basically a communication tool to tell people, here's what this program is, here's who we're looking for. And then the MOU kind of solidifies that to make sure, or try to make sure, that everybody's on the same page. And then on May 7th, we'll wrap up. So what do you do now that you have an open textbook? We'll talk about sort of both the specifics of wrapping up a project or a publishing program, as well as wrapping up our time together with Pub101. So that is truly a snapshot of what lays ahead.
So you might be asking yourself, am I in the right place? Well, typically, I think if you were to ask your librarian colleagues or other people who have been involved in publishing open textbooks, publishing is a pretty tough place to start. So if you are really in the beginning stages of your OER program in general, you might want to start with an adoption program, let's say. Or you might want to look at the Creative Commons certificate. The OEN also offers a Certificate in OER Librarianship. There's some reading there on Introduction to Open. And next week's speaker, Abby Elder, also created the OER Starter Kit. These are all great beginning places if you're just thinking about starting an OER program. But the very short answer to this question, am I in the right place, is yes. You're welcome to be here, of course. This is just some advice gleaned through the years that starting with publishing can be pretty tough because there's a lot involved.
Speaking of publishing, I want to be very explicit that we have no expectation about what kind of publishing you're doing or what level of publishing you need to be at in order to be a part of our community. I've been in my role not quite 10 years, and through those years often I'll talk to people and they'll say, "Well, we're not publishers, but...." And then they'll proceed to explain all of the work they have invested in helping a book or a textbook come to exist in the world. And it's like, yes, you are a publisher. You are helping things get out there. And so we have a very inclusive definition of what publishing is. And again, our goal is to help you consider what publishing means to you and your organization. Our goal is not to define that for you or tell you what we think you should be doing. You certainly know best in terms of what your environment and what your capacity can offer.
The Pub101 spirit, again, is that you're a human being, not a publishing machine. I'm making this sound really scary, right? I'm realizing as I hear myself. But these are meant to be assurances that you're not alone. There are a lot of people who can help. And there's many ways to publish. We're going to share some options. So with that, let's carry on. Please, in the chat, what are you looking forward to learning about in Pub101? I would love to hear, now that I've assured you it's not scary by telling you it's not scary, possibly too many times. What are you looking forward to learning about in Pub101? And I'm actually, I'll go back to this snapshot slide. Ooh, I went too far. There we are. Are some of these topics especially speaking to you? Is there something top of mind?
I'm going to take a look at the chat. Accessibility. Okay. How to engage faculty to adopt and publish. Working with authors. Collaborating. Oh, Lydia, yeah. What is the normal amount of responsibility in developing OER with authors? That's a great question. Copyright. Developing a textbook. Great. AI. Karen, we'll talk about that in just a moment. Developing workflows, super smart. Yeah, we will talk about project management and how you can develop some workflows. Thanks, everyone. I'm going to click forward in these slides again to where we left off. If you're still thinking, feel free to share as you wish, what you're looking forward to learning about in Pub101.
I'm now going to talk a little bit about the Pub101 curriculum. Now, this is a seven-week synchronous experience, a time for us to get together and talk about publishing. And it complements the Pub101 curriculum, which is in Canvas. And It does not teach the curriculum necessarily. We're not going to go through module by module and talk about what's there. But rather, we're going to kind of put that human face or human experience on a lot of the content that you find there. So as you go through the weeks and you hear the speakers, please know that what they're talking about, including resources and templates and tips, are probably also in that curriculum. And so we're using this time together to highlight that resource and let you know what's there for you. The units, we hope, are straightforward and supportive and very practical and hands-on. I have a link there to where you can find the Canvas curriculum and I will share my slides at the end of today. But more on that in a minute.
Karen mentioned in the chat that she's thinking about AI in OER programs, and so are we. Just days ago, the Pub101 committee added a fourth unit to the curriculum. This unit includes an overview of AI and OER. It talks a bit about the most recent developments in copyright and public domain when it comes to generative AI, especially. We discuss how authors might use AI in creating their content and help you answer the question, What do I tell authors who want to use AI? And the answer is, it depends. We don't have a specific session dedicated to this just because this unit is so new. But we have content there. If you look through it and have questions, let us know. And this, of course, is going to come up organically as we go through the weeks because it is top of mind. So I expect speakers will touch on it as we move through the weeks.
Okay, now in terms of Pub101 housekeeping. We do have a YouTube playlist. If you would like to be notified the moment these recordings are posted to that playlist, you can certainly subscribe. Otherwise, you will find these transcripts and videos posted to the OEN blog. Again, if you don't want your comments included, if you feel that having a more frank discussion would be possible if you knew that you could enjoy a more ephemeral experience, please let me know. And I'll add, everything here - the videos, the transcripts, everything - is linked from the orientation document. I call it the one-stop doc and it will be updated weekly. I emailed, I think, all of you. Hopefully you got an email from me yesterday with a link to this document. It's a Google Doc and the top of it looks like this. So this is what's called the orientation document or the one-stop document, this is your touchstone for the Pub101 experience. And it's from here that I will link the slides on a weekly basis.
Okay. So, thinking about what you might publish at your institution. Are you responding to a need? Are there students or faculty who are asking for help? Is there maybe a mandate from administration or a larger initiative on campus to say, reduce costs for students? Or maybe there's an opportunity to fit publishing into your strategic plan. Or it supports your faculty outreach goals at the library. It's really great to stop and reflect and consider what you're responding to as you think about developing support for open textbooks and other OER. And these are just some of the questions that you may want to ask yourself and ask your colleagues.
I'm going to talk about two publishing approaches and there are, of course, dozens, if not hundreds of publishing approaches. But for the sake of conversation over these next two weeks, it's helpful to organize into two buckets, if you will, or two approaches. The first approach is often called the DIY approach. And the DIY could refer both to you as the person who's helping with the project or managing the program. It may also refer to the faculty member who is maybe working almost independently, but with some of your support.
And then there's a second approach, which is called a full service approach. It's sometimes abbreviated as EDP, which stands for Editing, Design, and Production. And this is what you think of when you think of like the paperback that you hold in your hand in your evening reading. So there was a proofreader, an editor, maybe a developmental editor. There was someone who designed the cover and went through a few different ideations and back-and-forths. There was a whole production team making sure that the footnotes work the way they should. And that the front matter is the way you want it to be. So, you know, things can be kind of as self-serve or full serve, as you can imagine, and anything in between.
And so we're going to try and acknowledge that as we move through these discussions. And it may help you, too, to think like, oh, I'm probably the leaning towards the DIY model since I'm the one person here who might be able to do this work. Or perhaps you're finding yourself in a very fortunate position and you're like, well, we do have some funding. We need to spend it and let's really make this a showcase production of what we can do at the library. So those are two publishing approaches that we'll keep talking about as we continue.
So I'm about to ask a bunch of questions that may be more rhetorical than anything right now. And really, these are the questions we're going to explore over the next seven weeks that relates to this question of what kind of publisher am I going to be? And your answer right now might be, I have no idea. Somebody returns the capacity scan that I sent out in my email last night and that was the answer to some of the questions. I have no idea. And that makes perfect sense. That means you're in a good place because we're going to explore some reasons behind choices you may make for your program and help with generating some ideas. So… ask yourself, assess your environment as you think about whether or not you're going to be publishing. Who is going to be doing the work? Are you the one person who's going to support OER publishing at your institution? It can be done. It has been done. And it can be really rewarding. But it's also important to consider, what is your publishing experience. It can be zero, and you can still offer so much value to the publishing process. It's just, again, something to know about yourself.
And it's also important to think about which administrators are supporting the effort and what their priorities are. So taking a look around you and thinking, okay, even if it's just me, how enthusiastic is my boss about this process? Is there a colleague I could turn to if I get stuck on cover design? Thinking about whether there are staff or other partners with editing, design, and production experience can also be helpful. And many people have found that student employees or student interns can be super helpful to this environment or this process. And it also offers them useful work experience. And so that's another something to think about. Again, we're going to continue to help you assess your environment as we move through these weeks. But these are just initial questions to kind of get you going and get you thinking.
We're also going to spend time helping you identify the parameters of your program. So, for example, if you are a DIY program, you're the one person, or maybe one of a half position who's going to be doing this work. Perhaps you start with one project. Perhaps you work with someone you already have a relationship with. And the two of you decide, okay, we don't really know what we're doing, but we want to give this a shot. And let's learn from it. Same with how many authors you can work with in a year. And knowing whether this is a one-time experiment or a multi-year investment.
Oftentimes, publishing programs are synonymous with grant programs. So for example, you may give a stipend to a faculty author to create an open textbook. A percentage of that stipend is given at the halfway point and the rest of the stipend is once the book is completed. We will talk about that exact scenario again. But really thinking about your budget, your funding, if it's soft, if maybe there's in-kind funding. I know of one program that's been very successful with donor funds in providing the resources that they need for their open textbook publishing program. I'll also offer a little bit later some resources if you have zero funding and you still want to do this work and find a way forward, the Open Education Network understands that that's the situation of many, and we want to offer some resources for that scenario as well. And finally. These questions really help you define your support.
And so once you're able to define your support, you'll want to communicate that to faculty so that you can find basically a love match. So that they have a good idea of what they're going to get when they engage in this work with you, and you feel like you have communicated clear expectations to faculty as well so that you're kind of both entering into this relationship with some shared understanding of where it is you're going and what roles each of you have. So thinking about the services you have the capacity to support based on your staffing, your time and your funding.
What tools you might be able to offer faculty to create or to remix. And thinking about, do I want to be the go-to tech support for this? Or do I want to say upfront, you can use Google Docs, you can use Word, you can use Pressbooks I can help with copyright. I can help with understanding Creative Commons licenses. I am not the person you want to turn to when you can't figure out why the header isn't working. Kind of thinking through some of those details will be helpful as well.
Thinking about where you will host the content. So do you have an institutional repository where you can keep this open textbook? That can be very helpful. But again, there are books in the Open Textbook Library that live in a Google Drive. So there are a lot of creative options out there if you're working on a shoestring and you're just looking for any way to get an open resource out there. We are here to brainstorm with you.
And then finally, my last bullet, which is a little tongue-in-cheek, but I did see this concern in the chat. Will you give authors your cell number? I'm kind of, sort of, but not really, kidding. Again, this work can be a little intense. And so do you want to be getting calls late at night when somebody feels they may not be able to meet a deadline or are really frustrated? It's important to kind of think about what boundaries work for you. So I'm going to pause. I have asked a lot of questions and mentioned a lot of things that you might want to consider. Again, more rhetorical than anything at this point. Like we are going to dig more deeply into these questions. You're going to hear specific examples from people at different types of institutions who've designed their programs and their support according to their context and their resources. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, please know that we are going to build this process up together and help you answer those questions.
So in a word or two, and this is really based on the capacity scan that I sent out last night that you may or may not have had time to look at, asking you just in this moment after hearing some of these questions, how do you personally feel about your capacity for OER publishing at this time? Do you feel like, I'm overwhelmed, but I'm ready to jump in? Do you feel like this is way too much, a difficult time. I cannot take this on. Or neutral? Please let us know in the chat. I will take a look.
Some capacity, not sure it's the right time. Yeah, it can be a nervous making thing. This is really great to see. There's a wide range of experiences and moods, and it can be overwhelming. And for those of you who feel isolated, I hope that Pub101 can really help with that. That's definitely one of our goals. And so… do let us know how we can help. And we're so glad that you found this experience and that you're tuning in, so to speak, because we hope to help with that isolation and really build a community of support. So regardless of where you're at and where you're feeling right now, we're glad that you're here and there obviously is no right answer. So thank you for sharing and for bringing your thoughts to that question.
Now, in addition to your Pub101 community, there might be other people locally who can help. That includes students, libraries. Maybe you're not in a library. Librarians are probably good people to turn to. If not, the Center for Teaching and Learning or other instructional design hub. Faculty authors, I would say approach them as your partner as much as you can. And that will really set the tone for your relationship. A bookstore is sometimes an unexpected but very valuable partner, especially for those of you who are also thinking about adoption and how you can increase adoption on your campus.
You might be at an institution with a University Press. There are some OER publishing programs that have partnered with their university presses and they obviously have a lot of that editorial design and production experience and expertise. And so if you're able to work with them, that can be helpful. Sometimes there's a lot of times there's a lot of motivation within a particular academic unit or department. And so you may find allies and people who are really excited about this work within a department that you can work with. Really just seeking out people who can help you feel less isolated and less alone in addition to this OEN community.
Now, more specifically, as we help you answer these questions in the coming weeks, we're going to talk about how you can apply project management methods for communicating with authors. So one of you mentioned, I really want to create workflows. We're going to talk about workflows and communicating that workflow. We're probably going to say the word communicate a lot because it helps so much with this process. So definitely err on the side of over-communicating. Even if you feel like you've said it before, it'll be really helpful. I see some nodding.
We will help you identify key elements of an open textbook. So all of you can remember, whether it was yesterday or many years ago, opening a textbook and how you know it is that you're reading a textbook. You see maybe an introduction, you see a summary, you see bullet points or reflective questions or formulas. There are certain pedagogical elements that consistently occur in each chapter of a textbook. And we're going to talk about what some of those options are, how you can help an author select those pedagogical elements, and really just think about what needs to be there in order for it to be a textbook and not a monograph. What needs to be there in order for students to feel engaged and to see their experience reflected in the textbook when applicable, and all sorts of stuff about creating an open textbook.
We will touch on open pedagogy, but if you're really interested in open pedagogy and creating open textbooks, we have dedicated programs for that. So just let me know and I'm happy to point you in that direction. We will help you evaluate your capacity and select which publishing services work for your context, and consider, again, the human elements of publishing.
There is a lot of isolation and emotional labor in working on a book with somebody. It's very personal, and it can sometimes ramp up the emotional experience. There may be tough conversations. Somebody may turn in a chapter and you don't know what to do with the chapter because it isn't written well or is all over the place or is not at all what you thought it would be. And we will talk about how to have some of those conversations or how to approach that kind of situation. And then, of course, there's AI and so many different publishing platforms and new technologies to navigate. And so that can also be quite a bit.
Now, I mentioned that I wanted to talk about shared infrastructure and publishing tools. So if you are on a shoestring budget or you're not sure what tools you can offer authors, the OEN does provide options for its members. Pressbooks, which is very commonly used in creating open textbooks, offers OEN members a 30% discount on a Pressbooks instance if that's something that you might want to use. We also have a Manifold community. Manifold is an EPUB, an online book publishing platform. And it started as a pilot program in the OEN and has just grown really quickly. We have about 40 publications within our Manifold instance, created by people like you at institutions all around the world. And it is included in your OEN membership. And you are also a member of a Manifold community Google Group. We have members of the Manifold team in that group. So if you do run into a problem and aren't sure how to do something there's a way to get help really quickly. And so that is an option that you might want to investigate for your faculty if you're unable to pay for a Manifold instance locally.
And a third option is another pilot group for a publishing platform called Ketty. If you have been following the publishing platform world, you may remember a tool called Editoria or Ketida. Ketty is the new name, the third name of that same publishing platform. And we have been working closely with the developers in an effort to try and streamline some of those pedagogical elements we were talking about in terms of what makes a textbook. So that you and the authors do not have to figure out how to, obviously, I just lost that word. You don't have to figure out how to...I have to find a new way to say this. Format is what I was going for. You don't have to figure out how to format different headers or pedagogical elements. You can just basically set up, here's how I want all of my chapters to work. They're going to have an introduction. They're going to have reflective questions. They're going to have case studies, and then we'll have concluding questions at the end. You can set that up as a template so that each chapter will follow that format. So that is the Ketty pilot group. It is still a small group, but we are hoping to invest more into that project soon and make it available, much as we do the Manifold community. So stay tuned. I share this with you just to let you know that I can recover a word when I really need to, and that there are resources available for you as you map out your publishing program.
Speaking of resources, the publishing advisory group in the OEN recently released a publishing project toolkit and a publishing program toolkit These are chock-a-block with links to resources for building out projects and programs. They are also in the Pub101 curriculum along with lots of other templates that I've mentioned. However, you can also go to our website and access them directly there. Again, this is just a reminder. You can develop your workflow based on these toolkits. They are designed in a workflow manner. And you should be able to adapt whatever you find there to fit your institution.
Okay, so we're wrapping up. And as a friendly reminder, I just want to say you're not alone. You're among a community of people who are doing this work and you all have something to contribute. Regardless of what kind of publishing program you may be offering or your context, your experience matters and we can all learn from it. So we look forward to hearing about those experiences.
Next week, we're going to jump right in. We moved this session up to earlier in the Pub101 experience because working with authors is really about setting the tone. And Abby Elder, who's the open access and scholarly communication librarian at Iowa State University, will be talking about her experience working with authors and different strategies that she employs for some of the behaviors that she has seen throughout the years of working to produce open textbooks. That will be hosted by the chair of the Pub101 committee, Amanda Larson. She is the Affordable Learning Instructional Consultant at the Ohio State University. So a lot to look forward to next week.
I'm going to finish by thanking you for your commitment to student success, your willingness to learn more with all of us, and your interest in joining us. Again these are stressful, uncertain times, and I know that there are so many pressures and demands on your time. And so engaging in this process with us is much appreciated. If you want to reach out for any reason, there is my email. And with that, I will stop sharing the screen and see if there are any questions for me or the Pub101 committee before we adjourn.
Cindy asks, is there homework? Great question, Cindy. The answer is, yes and no. There's no homework that you have to turn in. There's nothing that will be graded. But we do suggest what to read and what to do in anticipation of the following week's session. So if you go to the Pub101 orientation document, it will tell you what to do in preparation for next week. I can't remember off the top of my head, so I'm going to have to go and look. There is no homework for this session, but after next week's session called Work with Authors we suggest that you review Unit 1 to prepare for the April 9th session. So we call homework, if you will, the curriculum connection. So just helping you connect what we're talking about with the curriculum and helping you feel like you have a grasp of how these two things work together and can enter into a conversation with some background. Thanks, Cindy.
Emily. Could you review again what you said about subscribing to Manifold if you are a consortial member but not yet an institutional member? Sure, I will also drop a link to our OEN Manifold community in the chat. Oh, it's already in the chat. Okay. Thanks, Amanda.
So Emily, if you are a member of an institution that is a member of the OEN.... Excuse me, if you're a member of an institution that's a member of a consortium that is a member of the OEN. I know. You can access Manifold through your consortial lead. So they would need to agree to basically be that publishing hub or that organizer. There's a role called project creator in Manifold. And so there would be a project creator at your consortial hub, and that person would then be able to make you or other people at other institutions within the consortium editors, which is pretty much all you really need to get going on a project. You don't have to keep going back to that person for permissions or things like that. They basically start the project for you and then you're off to the races. They're kind of a Russian doll set. Great question.
Ketty is in development. Yes, it is an open source tool. It is in GitHub. We have our own OEN instance for the pilot group. And we are in the process of updating that instance with some of the new features that Ketty has been working on. So you could potentially host your own instance if you wanted to, yes.
Any other questions?
Is the Pressbooks discount for an institutional membership or for individual plans per faculty? It is, I believe, at the institutional level. So if your institution wanted a Pressbooks instance, there would be a 30% discount for that. But it's worth reaching out to them, Whitney. Pressbooks decides on their discounts. So, it may be worth the question. Yeah, as Amanda said, they can make you a custom plan.
Well, this is not your last chance. I look forward to seeing all of you at the same time and same place next week.
On behalf of the Pub101 Committee and the Open Education Network, thank you for joining us and thank you for being interested in this work. We'll see you soon. Bye bye!
END OF VIDEO
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Pub101 is a free, informal, online orientation to open textbook publishing. You’ll hear from your OEN colleagues who have worked on open textbook publishing projects and are sharing what they’ve learned. In our initial 2025 synchronous session, OEN Senior Director, Publishing, Karen Lauritsen extends a warm welcome to guests and provides a brief introduction to the Open Education Network. She also previews this year's Pub101 agenda while introducing common publishing models and open publishing resources available to everyone.
Watch the video recording of this session or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.
Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please contact Tonia.
Audio Transcript
Speaker:
- Karen Lauritsen (Senior Director, Publishing, Open Education Network)
Karen: Well, welcome everybody to Pub101. This is an orientation to publishing open textbooks, and we are very glad that you are here. This is an initiative of the Open Education Network. We're a community of people working together to make higher education more open. And again, we're really glad that you could join us today. These are difficult and busy times and we know that you are short possibly in both time and energy. So we will try and make the most of the time we've set aside together.
My name is Karen Lauritsen. I'm Senior Director, Publishing, with the Open Education Network. Many of you have already started to introduce yourselves in the chat. Please continue. It's great to know where you're coming in from. Something fun about you or something you'd like to share that may or may not be related to work is also welcome.
I would like to introduce the Pub101 committee. This is a group of people who are really dedicated to ensuring that this is a meaningful experience for you. We have revised the seven sessions that you're going to experience, made some big changes since last year, got rid of some old sessions, are hosting new ones for the first time. And so they'll be saying hello to you in the chat. And I would really like to thank and acknowledge them for the time that they have spent on this program for you.
I would also like to welcome two new committee members who are joining us for this experience in Pub101 and will be officially joining the committee as soon as we wrap up these seven weeks. So thank you to Carmen and Christine.
One of the things, this is just an FYI that we will be working on once we're finished with our time together, is adapting this experience for your faculty. So as we go along, if you're thinking this is really overwhelming, I can't imagine introducing some of these concepts to my faculty, it would be really helpful if there were a program like this for them. Great. We would love to hear your input and your feedback. We hope that you would consider inviting your faculty to a foundation setting experience like Pub101. And then, of course, we wouldn't be able to speak to the specifics of your program at your institution. We would leave that to you, but we would hope to take some of that load off of your plates.
Okay, in terms of our time together today, I'm going to introduce a little bit more about the Open Education Network. I know that many of you probably received this invitation forwarded from your consortial lead. This might be your first experience with the OEN. And so I just want to explain a little bit about who we are. I will also talk about what to expect with Pub101. And then I will briefly go over two different publishing approaches that are pretty common in the open textbook and OER publishing space. Those generally help us organize our thinking around what kind of approach we might offer, what kind of services to make available to faculty based on your resources and capacity. So that's what it looks like for us today.
So the Open Education Network is based at the University of Minnesota. We are a community of people working together. And together, those people represent more than 1800 institutions, primarily in the United States, but also in Canada and Europe and Australia. And essentially what we do is share strategies, support, and resources with one another so that nobody has to feel isolated, ideally, or that they have to start from scratch and figure something out. There are a lot of people who've come before you and they're excited and willing to share their experience and their resources with you to adapt.
One thing that the Open Education Network offers that you may be familiar with is the Open Textbook Library. We manage that and make sure that it is a comprehensive repository of open textbooks that come from all over the country, all over the world. We also offer certificate programs and other stuff, but this is a snapshot of the OEN and who we are and what we like to do in concert with all of you.
We are also organized around guiding principles, which you can read more about on our website. The one that I would really like to highlight here today is humanity. We are here to share in our humanity. And in addition to being people with jobs and who have work to do and performance evaluations annually, we are also people who have dogs, who enjoy gardening, who have families and friends. And so we try to take that whole picture into account when we talk about work. Especially when it comes to publishing. For whatever reason, publishing can be pretty emotional, kind of a heavy lift. And so we're just here to remind you that if you struggle, you are not alone, and we see you and are with you and want to help you in your efforts. All of these other principles are really grounding and help guide us in our work, especially as times change and we approach new technologies and new environments.
Thinking about these principles and how we're applying them to Pub101 today and for the next seven weeks together, we are creating an environment in which we can learn, share, connect, and even have a little fun together. And we ask that everyone participate in an authentic, constructive, and active way and be considerate and respectful in our speech and actions. I am sure this will be the case, and look forward to getting to know all of you in this environment.
Okay, so what is Pub 101? Well, it's a friendly, informal orientation to publishing open textbooks. We do focus on open textbooks because of that connection to the Open Textbook Library. However, you can certainly extrapolate what we share today to apply to other OER and other publishing. What we're going to do is really ask a lot of questions to help you consider your local vision and capacity to do this work. And you might be here saying, we do not have any capacity to do this work at this time. And that's totally fine. You're welcome to simply sit in, join us, listen, consider. And there's no expectation that you will take on something that you may not have the resources to do.
Speaking of resources, we will highlight the resources that are available should you decide to publish open textbooks. We will help you anticipate common issues. You'll hear both success stories and sad stories or difficult stories of things that people tried that didn't go so well. And so we'll help you anticipate these things that are often pretty common. We're going to help you lay the foundation for an OER publishing program regardless of the tool you might be using. So we're not going to talk about the specifics of Pressbooks or Manifold or PubPub or other publishing tools. We're going to talk about more foundational, fundamental sort of structural stuff and then leave the publishing platform specifics to other opportunities and programs.
And then we're also going to support you in taking care of yourself in this work. Pub101 is low key. This is not a class. There are no grades. Come when you can. And truly, this is an evolving experience. And so if you get to the end of Pub101 and you say, you know what would have been really helpful? Let us know. We might be able to create a resource or a program that would evolve so that it can support you where you are right now. And Pub101 is also a beginning. Many of you may know each other, but many of you probably haven't met each other. And so this is really the beginning of creating a community and knowing who you can turn to if you have questions or just need someone to complain to or celebrate with.
So here is a snapshot of Pub101. Today is March 26th and you are now currently at the kick-off. Next week, we will talk about how to work with authors. And then we will talk about developing a textbook. How do you put a textbook together? What makes a textbook? How do you guide an author in that type of development? This is a brand new session and we're looking forward to sharing it with you. On April 16th, we'll talk about creating inclusion. How can a book reach the most students that the faculty member wants it to? How can it speak to the local environment. We're also going to talk about how to make textbooks accessible. This is especially top of mind with new changes to the ADA starting in 2026. And so we're going to talk about some of the specifics and what you can do to ensure accessibility.
We have a session on calls for proposals and memorandums of understanding, or CFP and MOU for short. And we're going to talk about how those complement each other, how your call for proposals is basically a communication tool to tell people, here's what this program is, here's who we're looking for. And then the MOU kind of solidifies that to make sure, or try to make sure, that everybody's on the same page. And then on May 7th, we'll wrap up. So what do you do now that you have an open textbook? We'll talk about sort of both the specifics of wrapping up a project or a publishing program, as well as wrapping up our time together with Pub101. So that is truly a snapshot of what lays ahead.
So you might be asking yourself, am I in the right place? Well, typically, I think if you were to ask your librarian colleagues or other people who have been involved in publishing open textbooks, publishing is a pretty tough place to start. So if you are really in the beginning stages of your OER program in general, you might want to start with an adoption program, let's say. Or you might want to look at the Creative Commons certificate. The OEN also offers a Certificate in OER Librarianship. There's some reading there on Introduction to Open. And next week's speaker, Abby Elder, also created the OER Starter Kit. These are all great beginning places if you're just thinking about starting an OER program. But the very short answer to this question, am I in the right place, is yes. You're welcome to be here, of course. This is just some advice gleaned through the years that starting with publishing can be pretty tough because there's a lot involved.
Speaking of publishing, I want to be very explicit that we have no expectation about what kind of publishing you're doing or what level of publishing you need to be at in order to be a part of our community. I've been in my role not quite 10 years, and through those years often I'll talk to people and they'll say, "Well, we're not publishers, but...." And then they'll proceed to explain all of the work they have invested in helping a book or a textbook come to exist in the world. And it's like, yes, you are a publisher. You are helping things get out there. And so we have a very inclusive definition of what publishing is. And again, our goal is to help you consider what publishing means to you and your organization. Our goal is not to define that for you or tell you what we think you should be doing. You certainly know best in terms of what your environment and what your capacity can offer.
The Pub101 spirit, again, is that you're a human being, not a publishing machine. I'm making this sound really scary, right? I'm realizing as I hear myself. But these are meant to be assurances that you're not alone. There are a lot of people who can help. And there's many ways to publish. We're going to share some options. So with that, let's carry on. Please, in the chat, what are you looking forward to learning about in Pub101? I would love to hear, now that I've assured you it's not scary by telling you it's not scary, possibly too many times. What are you looking forward to learning about in Pub101? And I'm actually, I'll go back to this snapshot slide. Ooh, I went too far. There we are. Are some of these topics especially speaking to you? Is there something top of mind?
I'm going to take a look at the chat. Accessibility. Okay. How to engage faculty to adopt and publish. Working with authors. Collaborating. Oh, Lydia, yeah. What is the normal amount of responsibility in developing OER with authors? That's a great question. Copyright. Developing a textbook. Great. AI. Karen, we'll talk about that in just a moment. Developing workflows, super smart. Yeah, we will talk about project management and how you can develop some workflows. Thanks, everyone. I'm going to click forward in these slides again to where we left off. If you're still thinking, feel free to share as you wish, what you're looking forward to learning about in Pub101.
I'm now going to talk a little bit about the Pub101 curriculum. Now, this is a seven-week synchronous experience, a time for us to get together and talk about publishing. And it complements the Pub101 curriculum, which is in Canvas. And It does not teach the curriculum necessarily. We're not going to go through module by module and talk about what's there. But rather, we're going to kind of put that human face or human experience on a lot of the content that you find there. So as you go through the weeks and you hear the speakers, please know that what they're talking about, including resources and templates and tips, are probably also in that curriculum. And so we're using this time together to highlight that resource and let you know what's there for you. The units, we hope, are straightforward and supportive and very practical and hands-on. I have a link there to where you can find the Canvas curriculum and I will share my slides at the end of today. But more on that in a minute.
Karen mentioned in the chat that she's thinking about AI in OER programs, and so are we. Just days ago, the Pub101 committee added a fourth unit to the curriculum. This unit includes an overview of AI and OER. It talks a bit about the most recent developments in copyright and public domain when it comes to generative AI, especially. We discuss how authors might use AI in creating their content and help you answer the question, What do I tell authors who want to use AI? And the answer is, it depends. We don't have a specific session dedicated to this just because this unit is so new. But we have content there. If you look through it and have questions, let us know. And this, of course, is going to come up organically as we go through the weeks because it is top of mind. So I expect speakers will touch on it as we move through the weeks.
Okay, now in terms of Pub101 housekeeping. We do have a YouTube playlist. If you would like to be notified the moment these recordings are posted to that playlist, you can certainly subscribe. Otherwise, you will find these transcripts and videos posted to the OEN blog. Again, if you don't want your comments included, if you feel that having a more frank discussion would be possible if you knew that you could enjoy a more ephemeral experience, please let me know. And I'll add, everything here - the videos, the transcripts, everything - is linked from the orientation document. I call it the one-stop doc and it will be updated weekly. I emailed, I think, all of you. Hopefully you got an email from me yesterday with a link to this document. It's a Google Doc and the top of it looks like this. So this is what's called the orientation document or the one-stop document, this is your touchstone for the Pub101 experience. And it's from here that I will link the slides on a weekly basis.
Okay. So, thinking about what you might publish at your institution. Are you responding to a need? Are there students or faculty who are asking for help? Is there maybe a mandate from administration or a larger initiative on campus to say, reduce costs for students? Or maybe there's an opportunity to fit publishing into your strategic plan. Or it supports your faculty outreach goals at the library. It's really great to stop and reflect and consider what you're responding to as you think about developing support for open textbooks and other OER. And these are just some of the questions that you may want to ask yourself and ask your colleagues.
I'm going to talk about two publishing approaches and there are, of course, dozens, if not hundreds of publishing approaches. But for the sake of conversation over these next two weeks, it's helpful to organize into two buckets, if you will, or two approaches. The first approach is often called the DIY approach. And the DIY could refer both to you as the person who's helping with the project or managing the program. It may also refer to the faculty member who is maybe working almost independently, but with some of your support.
And then there's a second approach, which is called a full service approach. It's sometimes abbreviated as EDP, which stands for Editing, Design, and Production. And this is what you think of when you think of like the paperback that you hold in your hand in your evening reading. So there was a proofreader, an editor, maybe a developmental editor. There was someone who designed the cover and went through a few different ideations and back-and-forths. There was a whole production team making sure that the footnotes work the way they should. And that the front matter is the way you want it to be. So, you know, things can be kind of as self-serve or full serve, as you can imagine, and anything in between.
And so we're going to try and acknowledge that as we move through these discussions. And it may help you, too, to think like, oh, I'm probably the leaning towards the DIY model since I'm the one person here who might be able to do this work. Or perhaps you're finding yourself in a very fortunate position and you're like, well, we do have some funding. We need to spend it and let's really make this a showcase production of what we can do at the library. So those are two publishing approaches that we'll keep talking about as we continue.
So I'm about to ask a bunch of questions that may be more rhetorical than anything right now. And really, these are the questions we're going to explore over the next seven weeks that relates to this question of what kind of publisher am I going to be? And your answer right now might be, I have no idea. Somebody returns the capacity scan that I sent out in my email last night and that was the answer to some of the questions. I have no idea. And that makes perfect sense. That means you're in a good place because we're going to explore some reasons behind choices you may make for your program and help with generating some ideas. So… ask yourself, assess your environment as you think about whether or not you're going to be publishing. Who is going to be doing the work? Are you the one person who's going to support OER publishing at your institution? It can be done. It has been done. And it can be really rewarding. But it's also important to consider, what is your publishing experience. It can be zero, and you can still offer so much value to the publishing process. It's just, again, something to know about yourself.
And it's also important to think about which administrators are supporting the effort and what their priorities are. So taking a look around you and thinking, okay, even if it's just me, how enthusiastic is my boss about this process? Is there a colleague I could turn to if I get stuck on cover design? Thinking about whether there are staff or other partners with editing, design, and production experience can also be helpful. And many people have found that student employees or student interns can be super helpful to this environment or this process. And it also offers them useful work experience. And so that's another something to think about. Again, we're going to continue to help you assess your environment as we move through these weeks. But these are just initial questions to kind of get you going and get you thinking.
We're also going to spend time helping you identify the parameters of your program. So, for example, if you are a DIY program, you're the one person, or maybe one of a half position who's going to be doing this work. Perhaps you start with one project. Perhaps you work with someone you already have a relationship with. And the two of you decide, okay, we don't really know what we're doing, but we want to give this a shot. And let's learn from it. Same with how many authors you can work with in a year. And knowing whether this is a one-time experiment or a multi-year investment.
Oftentimes, publishing programs are synonymous with grant programs. So for example, you may give a stipend to a faculty author to create an open textbook. A percentage of that stipend is given at the halfway point and the rest of the stipend is once the book is completed. We will talk about that exact scenario again. But really thinking about your budget, your funding, if it's soft, if maybe there's in-kind funding. I know of one program that's been very successful with donor funds in providing the resources that they need for their open textbook publishing program. I'll also offer a little bit later some resources if you have zero funding and you still want to do this work and find a way forward, the Open Education Network understands that that's the situation of many, and we want to offer some resources for that scenario as well. And finally. These questions really help you define your support.
And so once you're able to define your support, you'll want to communicate that to faculty so that you can find basically a love match. So that they have a good idea of what they're going to get when they engage in this work with you, and you feel like you have communicated clear expectations to faculty as well so that you're kind of both entering into this relationship with some shared understanding of where it is you're going and what roles each of you have. So thinking about the services you have the capacity to support based on your staffing, your time and your funding.
What tools you might be able to offer faculty to create or to remix. And thinking about, do I want to be the go-to tech support for this? Or do I want to say upfront, you can use Google Docs, you can use Word, you can use Pressbooks I can help with copyright. I can help with understanding Creative Commons licenses. I am not the person you want to turn to when you can't figure out why the header isn't working. Kind of thinking through some of those details will be helpful as well.
Thinking about where you will host the content. So do you have an institutional repository where you can keep this open textbook? That can be very helpful. But again, there are books in the Open Textbook Library that live in a Google Drive. So there are a lot of creative options out there if you're working on a shoestring and you're just looking for any way to get an open resource out there. We are here to brainstorm with you.
And then finally, my last bullet, which is a little tongue-in-cheek, but I did see this concern in the chat. Will you give authors your cell number? I'm kind of, sort of, but not really, kidding. Again, this work can be a little intense. And so do you want to be getting calls late at night when somebody feels they may not be able to meet a deadline or are really frustrated? It's important to kind of think about what boundaries work for you. So I'm going to pause. I have asked a lot of questions and mentioned a lot of things that you might want to consider. Again, more rhetorical than anything at this point. Like we are going to dig more deeply into these questions. You're going to hear specific examples from people at different types of institutions who've designed their programs and their support according to their context and their resources. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, please know that we are going to build this process up together and help you answer those questions.
So in a word or two, and this is really based on the capacity scan that I sent out last night that you may or may not have had time to look at, asking you just in this moment after hearing some of these questions, how do you personally feel about your capacity for OER publishing at this time? Do you feel like, I'm overwhelmed, but I'm ready to jump in? Do you feel like this is way too much, a difficult time. I cannot take this on. Or neutral? Please let us know in the chat. I will take a look.
Some capacity, not sure it's the right time. Yeah, it can be a nervous making thing. This is really great to see. There's a wide range of experiences and moods, and it can be overwhelming. And for those of you who feel isolated, I hope that Pub101 can really help with that. That's definitely one of our goals. And so… do let us know how we can help. And we're so glad that you found this experience and that you're tuning in, so to speak, because we hope to help with that isolation and really build a community of support. So regardless of where you're at and where you're feeling right now, we're glad that you're here and there obviously is no right answer. So thank you for sharing and for bringing your thoughts to that question.
Now, in addition to your Pub101 community, there might be other people locally who can help. That includes students, libraries. Maybe you're not in a library. Librarians are probably good people to turn to. If not, the Center for Teaching and Learning or other instructional design hub. Faculty authors, I would say approach them as your partner as much as you can. And that will really set the tone for your relationship. A bookstore is sometimes an unexpected but very valuable partner, especially for those of you who are also thinking about adoption and how you can increase adoption on your campus.
You might be at an institution with a University Press. There are some OER publishing programs that have partnered with their university presses and they obviously have a lot of that editorial design and production experience and expertise. And so if you're able to work with them, that can be helpful. Sometimes there's a lot of times there's a lot of motivation within a particular academic unit or department. And so you may find allies and people who are really excited about this work within a department that you can work with. Really just seeking out people who can help you feel less isolated and less alone in addition to this OEN community.
Now, more specifically, as we help you answer these questions in the coming weeks, we're going to talk about how you can apply project management methods for communicating with authors. So one of you mentioned, I really want to create workflows. We're going to talk about workflows and communicating that workflow. We're probably going to say the word communicate a lot because it helps so much with this process. So definitely err on the side of over-communicating. Even if you feel like you've said it before, it'll be really helpful. I see some nodding.
We will help you identify key elements of an open textbook. So all of you can remember, whether it was yesterday or many years ago, opening a textbook and how you know it is that you're reading a textbook. You see maybe an introduction, you see a summary, you see bullet points or reflective questions or formulas. There are certain pedagogical elements that consistently occur in each chapter of a textbook. And we're going to talk about what some of those options are, how you can help an author select those pedagogical elements, and really just think about what needs to be there in order for it to be a textbook and not a monograph. What needs to be there in order for students to feel engaged and to see their experience reflected in the textbook when applicable, and all sorts of stuff about creating an open textbook.
We will touch on open pedagogy, but if you're really interested in open pedagogy and creating open textbooks, we have dedicated programs for that. So just let me know and I'm happy to point you in that direction. We will help you evaluate your capacity and select which publishing services work for your context, and consider, again, the human elements of publishing.
There is a lot of isolation and emotional labor in working on a book with somebody. It's very personal, and it can sometimes ramp up the emotional experience. There may be tough conversations. Somebody may turn in a chapter and you don't know what to do with the chapter because it isn't written well or is all over the place or is not at all what you thought it would be. And we will talk about how to have some of those conversations or how to approach that kind of situation. And then, of course, there's AI and so many different publishing platforms and new technologies to navigate. And so that can also be quite a bit.
Now, I mentioned that I wanted to talk about shared infrastructure and publishing tools. So if you are on a shoestring budget or you're not sure what tools you can offer authors, the OEN does provide options for its members. Pressbooks, which is very commonly used in creating open textbooks, offers OEN members a 30% discount on a Pressbooks instance if that's something that you might want to use. We also have a Manifold community. Manifold is an EPUB, an online book publishing platform. And it started as a pilot program in the OEN and has just grown really quickly. We have about 40 publications within our Manifold instance, created by people like you at institutions all around the world. And it is included in your OEN membership. And you are also a member of a Manifold community Google Group. We have members of the Manifold team in that group. So if you do run into a problem and aren't sure how to do something there's a way to get help really quickly. And so that is an option that you might want to investigate for your faculty if you're unable to pay for a Manifold instance locally.
And a third option is another pilot group for a publishing platform called Ketty. If you have been following the publishing platform world, you may remember a tool called Editoria or Ketida. Ketty is the new name, the third name of that same publishing platform. And we have been working closely with the developers in an effort to try and streamline some of those pedagogical elements we were talking about in terms of what makes a textbook. So that you and the authors do not have to figure out how to, obviously, I just lost that word. You don't have to figure out how to...I have to find a new way to say this. Format is what I was going for. You don't have to figure out how to format different headers or pedagogical elements. You can just basically set up, here's how I want all of my chapters to work. They're going to have an introduction. They're going to have reflective questions. They're going to have case studies, and then we'll have concluding questions at the end. You can set that up as a template so that each chapter will follow that format. So that is the Ketty pilot group. It is still a small group, but we are hoping to invest more into that project soon and make it available, much as we do the Manifold community. So stay tuned. I share this with you just to let you know that I can recover a word when I really need to, and that there are resources available for you as you map out your publishing program.
Speaking of resources, the publishing advisory group in the OEN recently released a publishing project toolkit and a publishing program toolkit These are chock-a-block with links to resources for building out projects and programs. They are also in the Pub101 curriculum along with lots of other templates that I've mentioned. However, you can also go to our website and access them directly there. Again, this is just a reminder. You can develop your workflow based on these toolkits. They are designed in a workflow manner. And you should be able to adapt whatever you find there to fit your institution.
Okay, so we're wrapping up. And as a friendly reminder, I just want to say you're not alone. You're among a community of people who are doing this work and you all have something to contribute. Regardless of what kind of publishing program you may be offering or your context, your experience matters and we can all learn from it. So we look forward to hearing about those experiences.
Next week, we're going to jump right in. We moved this session up to earlier in the Pub101 experience because working with authors is really about setting the tone. And Abby Elder, who's the open access and scholarly communication librarian at Iowa State University, will be talking about her experience working with authors and different strategies that she employs for some of the behaviors that she has seen throughout the years of working to produce open textbooks. That will be hosted by the chair of the Pub101 committee, Amanda Larson. She is the Affordable Learning Instructional Consultant at the Ohio State University. So a lot to look forward to next week.
I'm going to finish by thanking you for your commitment to student success, your willingness to learn more with all of us, and your interest in joining us. Again these are stressful, uncertain times, and I know that there are so many pressures and demands on your time. And so engaging in this process with us is much appreciated. If you want to reach out for any reason, there is my email. And with that, I will stop sharing the screen and see if there are any questions for me or the Pub101 committee before we adjourn.
Cindy asks, is there homework? Great question, Cindy. The answer is, yes and no. There's no homework that you have to turn in. There's nothing that will be graded. But we do suggest what to read and what to do in anticipation of the following week's session. So if you go to the Pub101 orientation document, it will tell you what to do in preparation for next week. I can't remember off the top of my head, so I'm going to have to go and look. There is no homework for this session, but after next week's session called Work with Authors we suggest that you review Unit 1 to prepare for the April 9th session. So we call homework, if you will, the curriculum connection. So just helping you connect what we're talking about with the curriculum and helping you feel like you have a grasp of how these two things work together and can enter into a conversation with some background. Thanks, Cindy.
Emily. Could you review again what you said about subscribing to Manifold if you are a consortial member but not yet an institutional member? Sure, I will also drop a link to our OEN Manifold community in the chat. Oh, it's already in the chat. Okay. Thanks, Amanda.
So Emily, if you are a member of an institution that is a member of the OEN.... Excuse me, if you're a member of an institution that's a member of a consortium that is a member of the OEN. I know. You can access Manifold through your consortial lead. So they would need to agree to basically be that publishing hub or that organizer. There's a role called project creator in Manifold. And so there would be a project creator at your consortial hub, and that person would then be able to make you or other people at other institutions within the consortium editors, which is pretty much all you really need to get going on a project. You don't have to keep going back to that person for permissions or things like that. They basically start the project for you and then you're off to the races. They're kind of a Russian doll set. Great question.
Ketty is in development. Yes, it is an open source tool. It is in GitHub. We have our own OEN instance for the pilot group. And we are in the process of updating that instance with some of the new features that Ketty has been working on. So you could potentially host your own instance if you wanted to, yes.
Any other questions?
Is the Pressbooks discount for an institutional membership or for individual plans per faculty? It is, I believe, at the institutional level. So if your institution wanted a Pressbooks instance, there would be a 30% discount for that. But it's worth reaching out to them, Whitney. Pressbooks decides on their discounts. So, it may be worth the question. Yeah, as Amanda said, they can make you a custom plan.
Well, this is not your last chance. I look forward to seeing all of you at the same time and same place next week.
On behalf of the Pub101 Committee and the Open Education Network, thank you for joining us and thank you for being interested in this work. We'll see you soon. Bye bye!
END OF VIDEO
Chat Transcript
00:13:47 Marian Hampton: Reacted to "Hi everyone! I’m Car..." with 👍
00:13:48 Carli Reinecke: Hello! I am Carli from University of Wisconsin Green Bay. I am the OER librarian
00:13:49 Jessica McClean: Hi everyone! I'm Jessica McClean, Director of OER & Digital Scholarship at the University of Texas at Arlington and a member of the Pub101 Committee.
00:14:09 CIndy Gruwell: Pub 101 committee member
00:14:23 Micah Gjeltema: Hello all! I’m Micah Gjeltema, Open Education Librarian from the University of Minnesota - Twin cities and Pub 101 committee member
00:15:38 Jenny Castel: Hi everyone, Jenny from Wheaton College in Massachusetts where I am the Instruction Technology Librarian
00:15:51 Amanda Larson: YAY! Carmen and Christine!
00:15:57 Carmen Cole: Reacted to "YAY! Carmen and Chri..." with ❤️
00:16:00 Marian Hampton: Reacted to "YAY! Carmen and Chri..." with ❤️
00:16:04 Christine Rickabaugh: Reacted to "YAY! Carmen and Chri..." with ❤️
00:16:07 Lora Largo: Hello everyone! This is Lora from South Mountain Community College, Phoenix, AZ.
00:16:28 Cameron Boucher: Hi! I’m Cameron Boucher, Educational and Scholarly Technology Assistant from Bryn Mawr College.
00:16:36 Jon Drucker: Jon Drucker, Collections & Affordable Learning Librarian @ Arcadia University in Glenside PA
00:18:38 Amanda Larson: https://open.umn.edu/oen/about
00:20:13 Bronwen Densmore: Bronwen Densmore, Makerspace Coordinator at Bryn Mawr College (and former librarian). Especially interested in places where open access and open source worlds intersect.
00:23:16 Whitney Russell: Hi everyone! I'm Whitney, I am the Open Scholarship Librarian here in Augusta, GA at Augusta University
00:24:34 Amanda Larson: https://certificates.creativecommons.org https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/178527 https://www.ubiquitypress.com/site/chapters/e/10.5334/bbc.a/ https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/oerstarterkit/
00:27:39 Geoff Carr: How to engage my faculty colleagues to adopt/publish OER.
00:27:42 Anna Uribe: Accessibility
00:27:50 Daniel DuPont @ DCC (he/him): how to develop a textbook, put the actual textbook together
00:27:51 Danielle Poole: Developing a textbook
00:27:53 Amelia Brister: Working with authors
00:27:54 Nicole Gresham: How to work with faculty/authors
00:27:56 Emily Mineart: How to collaborate effectively with faculty authors, and help them transform their hesitation into excitement!
00:27:58 Kate Farley: Develop a Textbook
00:27:58 Lydia Burrage-Goodwin: What is a normal amount of responsibility in developing OER with faculty
00:28:03 Marian Hampton: Overview of the OER textbook publishing process and working with authors
00:28:06 Misty Trunnell: work with authors & develop a textbook
00:28:09 Bonnie Finn: Working with faculty that want to develop an Open Textbook
00:28:11 Sara Lynnore - St. Olaf College: Helping faculty or authors on copyright. Helping with publication but not taking on too much
00:28:13 Carmen Cole: I have a few certificates in OER, but haven’t learned too much from the PUBLISHING side of things. Excited for this whole course!
00:28:16 Carli Reinecke: develop a textbook
00:28:23 Anna Crosswhite: What resources are needed to start a program. Capacity expectations.
00:28:24 Amanda Larson: Replying to "What is a normal amo..." the amount you have capacity for!
00:28:26 Karen Brunner: Using AI to develop as it relates to copyright concerns.
00:28:30 Jon Drucker: How much capacity we have now to enable our faculty to publish OER and how we can build that
00:28:33 Lydia Burrage-Goodwin: Reacted to "the amount you have ..." with ❤️
00:28:37 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: I am new in my position, so I would like to develop a workflow in working with faculty and supporting them in publishing their work.
00:28:41 Emily Mineart: Reacted to "Using AI to develop ..." with ☝️
00:28:44 Marian Hampton: Reacted to "Using AI to develop ..." with 👍
00:28:57 Lora Largo: I am interested in accessiblity.
00:29:36 Amanda Larson: https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/377173
00:29:38 Caitlin Cooper (DCC) (she/her): I agree with Geoff about getting faculty to adopt/adapt/publish.
00:29:47 Christine Rickabaugh: Reacted to "How much capacity we..." with 👍🏻
00:30:51 Amanda Larson: https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/377173/pages/unit-4-overview-learning-goals-and-glossary?module_item_id=13418702
00:31:05 Amanda Larson: copyright as of Jan 2025
00:31:14 Karen Brunner: Reacted to "copyright as of Jan ..." with 👍
00:31:40 Amanda Larson: there should be one more report that comes out from the copyright office this year
00:31:49 Karen Brunner: Reacted to "there should be one ..." with 👍
00:32:04 Amanda Larson: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vda-Ue56xlFbY5mm6eRPURmI
00:32:39 Amanda Larson: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l5A2okUKSVi0SqzoYELjYnsTs7DResOf6zwdr2oU14A/edit?tab=t.0
00:42:49 Amanda Larson: Capacity Scan: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rVwIBS7pmtRuTrwxC-v6_AT0oQHDrqa9l1jXOb1VDKk/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.vak5obq87kdp
00:43:07 Carmen Cole: SOME capacity
00:43:11 Jon Drucker: “Not sure”
00:43:11 Lora Amsberryaugier: It's the right time.
00:43:15 Christine Rickabaugh: Let's do this!!!
00:43:18 Danielle Poole: Nervous that I'm going to do a bad job.
00:43:18 Bonnie Finn: A lot going on, but some capacity and a lot of interest
00:43:19 Karen Brunner: overwhelmed, but strike while the iron's hot.
00:43:20 Sara Lynnore - St. Olaf College: Cautiously optimistic
00:43:21 Geoff Carr: Catch back up during summer break.
00:43:25 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Lots of capacity. :)
00:43:25 Whitney Russell: I'm new to my organization and have time and space
00:43:26 Rose Adams: Not ready but this still feels valuable to be learning
00:43:30 Michele Waldera: overwhelmed and feel iscolated
00:43:36 Anna Uribe: More interested in guiding rather than producing
00:43:42 Emily Mineart: Hesitantly enthusiastic
00:43:44 Kate Farley: We have a good start / confident
00:43:44 Maureen Olle-LaJoie: Not sure yet.
00:43:45 Joelle Thomas: Looking ahead—not much capacity now, but I want to lay a foundation for myself for later
00:43:59 Sonya Durney: Some capacity - but also more concerned about the IMLS etc
;-)
00:44:05 Amanda Larson: Reacted to "Some capacity - but ..." with 💯
00:44:09 Emily Mineart: Reacted to "Some capacity - but ..." with 😭
00:44:11 Amelia Brister: Excited!
00:44:14 Joelle Thomas: Reacted to "Some capacity - but ..." with 😭
00:44:20 Nicole Gresham: Reacted to "Some capacity - but ..." with 💯
00:44:22 Lora Largo: I have zero knowledge, but I am looking forward to learn.
00:44:33 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "Some capacity - but ..." with 😭
00:44:34 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "Some capacity - but ..." with 💯
00:48:55 Amanda Larson: https://open.umn.edu/oen/open-textbook-publishing
00:49:30 Amanda Larson: https://manifold.open.umn.edu
00:54:42 CIndy Gruwell: Is there homework?
00:55:37 Emily Mineart: Could you review again what you said about subscribing to Manifold, if you are a consortial member, but not yet an institutional member?
00:56:50 Emily Mineart: It's like nesting dolls, isn't it
00:56:54 Amanda Larson: it is!
00:56:57 Amanda Larson: https://manifold.open.umn.edu/projects/oen-manifold-community
00:57:02 Amanda Larson: here's a more direct link
00:57:18 Christine Rickabaugh: 🪆
00:57:26 Amanda Larson: Reacted to "🪆" with 🤣
00:57:29 Emily Mineart: Thank you!
00:57:35 Nicole Gresham: Thank you!
00:57:36 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: is Ketty in development? There is a GitHub repository for it.
00:58:10 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Thank you!
00:58:27 Whitney Russell: Is the pressbooks discount for an institutional membership?
00:58:32 Whitney Russell: or for individual plans per faculty
00:58:47 Daniel DuPont @ DCC (he/him): i'm a little intimidated but excited to learn all of this
00:58:49 Jon Drucker: Thanks, gtg
00:59:03 Amanda Larson: they can make you a custom plan too
00:59:16 Whitney Russell: ok great thanks!
00:59:45 Rose Adams: Thank you!
00:59:45 Sara Lynnore - St. Olaf College: Thank you!
00:59:46 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Thank you so much!
00:59:49 Danielle Poole: Thank you!
00:59:52 Micah Gjeltema: Thanks all!!!
00:13:48 Carli Reinecke: Hello! I am Carli from University of Wisconsin Green Bay. I am the OER librarian
00:13:49 Jessica McClean: Hi everyone! I'm Jessica McClean, Director of OER & Digital Scholarship at the University of Texas at Arlington and a member of the Pub101 Committee.
00:14:09 CIndy Gruwell: Pub 101 committee member
00:14:23 Micah Gjeltema: Hello all! I’m Micah Gjeltema, Open Education Librarian from the University of Minnesota - Twin cities and Pub 101 committee member
00:15:38 Jenny Castel: Hi everyone, Jenny from Wheaton College in Massachusetts where I am the Instruction Technology Librarian
00:15:51 Amanda Larson: YAY! Carmen and Christine!
00:15:57 Carmen Cole: Reacted to "YAY! Carmen and Chri..." with ❤️
00:16:00 Marian Hampton: Reacted to "YAY! Carmen and Chri..." with ❤️
00:16:04 Christine Rickabaugh: Reacted to "YAY! Carmen and Chri..." with ❤️
00:16:07 Lora Largo: Hello everyone! This is Lora from South Mountain Community College, Phoenix, AZ.
00:16:28 Cameron Boucher: Hi! I’m Cameron Boucher, Educational and Scholarly Technology Assistant from Bryn Mawr College.
00:16:36 Jon Drucker: Jon Drucker, Collections & Affordable Learning Librarian @ Arcadia University in Glenside PA
00:18:38 Amanda Larson: https://open.umn.edu/oen/about
00:20:13 Bronwen Densmore: Bronwen Densmore, Makerspace Coordinator at Bryn Mawr College (and former librarian). Especially interested in places where open access and open source worlds intersect.
00:23:16 Whitney Russell: Hi everyone! I'm Whitney, I am the Open Scholarship Librarian here in Augusta, GA at Augusta University
00:24:34 Amanda Larson: https://certificates.creativecommons.org https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/178527 https://www.ubiquitypress.com/site/chapters/e/10.5334/bbc.a/ https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/oerstarterkit/
00:27:39 Geoff Carr: How to engage my faculty colleagues to adopt/publish OER.
00:27:42 Anna Uribe: Accessibility
00:27:50 Daniel DuPont @ DCC (he/him): how to develop a textbook, put the actual textbook together
00:27:51 Danielle Poole: Developing a textbook
00:27:53 Amelia Brister: Working with authors
00:27:54 Nicole Gresham: How to work with faculty/authors
00:27:56 Emily Mineart: How to collaborate effectively with faculty authors, and help them transform their hesitation into excitement!
00:27:58 Kate Farley: Develop a Textbook
00:27:58 Lydia Burrage-Goodwin: What is a normal amount of responsibility in developing OER with faculty
00:28:03 Marian Hampton: Overview of the OER textbook publishing process and working with authors
00:28:06 Misty Trunnell: work with authors & develop a textbook
00:28:09 Bonnie Finn: Working with faculty that want to develop an Open Textbook
00:28:11 Sara Lynnore - St. Olaf College: Helping faculty or authors on copyright. Helping with publication but not taking on too much
00:28:13 Carmen Cole: I have a few certificates in OER, but haven’t learned too much from the PUBLISHING side of things. Excited for this whole course!
00:28:16 Carli Reinecke: develop a textbook
00:28:23 Anna Crosswhite: What resources are needed to start a program. Capacity expectations.
00:28:24 Amanda Larson: Replying to "What is a normal amo..." the amount you have capacity for!
00:28:26 Karen Brunner: Using AI to develop as it relates to copyright concerns.
00:28:30 Jon Drucker: How much capacity we have now to enable our faculty to publish OER and how we can build that
00:28:33 Lydia Burrage-Goodwin: Reacted to "the amount you have ..." with ❤️
00:28:37 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: I am new in my position, so I would like to develop a workflow in working with faculty and supporting them in publishing their work.
00:28:41 Emily Mineart: Reacted to "Using AI to develop ..." with ☝️
00:28:44 Marian Hampton: Reacted to "Using AI to develop ..." with 👍
00:28:57 Lora Largo: I am interested in accessiblity.
00:29:36 Amanda Larson: https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/377173
00:29:38 Caitlin Cooper (DCC) (she/her): I agree with Geoff about getting faculty to adopt/adapt/publish.
00:29:47 Christine Rickabaugh: Reacted to "How much capacity we..." with 👍🏻
00:30:51 Amanda Larson: https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/377173/pages/unit-4-overview-learning-goals-and-glossary?module_item_id=13418702
00:31:05 Amanda Larson: copyright as of Jan 2025
00:31:14 Karen Brunner: Reacted to "copyright as of Jan ..." with 👍
00:31:40 Amanda Larson: there should be one more report that comes out from the copyright office this year
00:31:49 Karen Brunner: Reacted to "there should be one ..." with 👍
00:32:04 Amanda Larson: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vda-Ue56xlFbY5mm6eRPURmI
00:32:39 Amanda Larson: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l5A2okUKSVi0SqzoYELjYnsTs7DResOf6zwdr2oU14A/edit?tab=t.0
00:42:49 Amanda Larson: Capacity Scan: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rVwIBS7pmtRuTrwxC-v6_AT0oQHDrqa9l1jXOb1VDKk/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.vak5obq87kdp
00:43:07 Carmen Cole: SOME capacity
00:43:11 Jon Drucker: “Not sure”
00:43:11 Lora Amsberryaugier: It's the right time.
00:43:15 Christine Rickabaugh: Let's do this!!!
00:43:18 Danielle Poole: Nervous that I'm going to do a bad job.
00:43:18 Bonnie Finn: A lot going on, but some capacity and a lot of interest
00:43:19 Karen Brunner: overwhelmed, but strike while the iron's hot.
00:43:20 Sara Lynnore - St. Olaf College: Cautiously optimistic
00:43:21 Geoff Carr: Catch back up during summer break.
00:43:25 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Lots of capacity. :)
00:43:25 Whitney Russell: I'm new to my organization and have time and space
00:43:26 Rose Adams: Not ready but this still feels valuable to be learning
00:43:30 Michele Waldera: overwhelmed and feel iscolated
00:43:36 Anna Uribe: More interested in guiding rather than producing
00:43:42 Emily Mineart: Hesitantly enthusiastic
00:43:44 Kate Farley: We have a good start / confident
00:43:44 Maureen Olle-LaJoie: Not sure yet.
00:43:45 Joelle Thomas: Looking ahead—not much capacity now, but I want to lay a foundation for myself for later
00:43:59 Sonya Durney: Some capacity - but also more concerned about the IMLS etc
;-)
00:44:05 Amanda Larson: Reacted to "Some capacity - but ..." with 💯
00:44:09 Emily Mineart: Reacted to "Some capacity - but ..." with 😭
00:44:11 Amelia Brister: Excited!
00:44:14 Joelle Thomas: Reacted to "Some capacity - but ..." with 😭
00:44:20 Nicole Gresham: Reacted to "Some capacity - but ..." with 💯
00:44:22 Lora Largo: I have zero knowledge, but I am looking forward to learn.
00:44:33 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "Some capacity - but ..." with 😭
00:44:34 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "Some capacity - but ..." with 💯
00:48:55 Amanda Larson: https://open.umn.edu/oen/open-textbook-publishing
00:49:30 Amanda Larson: https://manifold.open.umn.edu
00:54:42 CIndy Gruwell: Is there homework?
00:55:37 Emily Mineart: Could you review again what you said about subscribing to Manifold, if you are a consortial member, but not yet an institutional member?
00:56:50 Emily Mineart: It's like nesting dolls, isn't it
00:56:54 Amanda Larson: it is!
00:56:57 Amanda Larson: https://manifold.open.umn.edu/projects/oen-manifold-community
00:57:02 Amanda Larson: here's a more direct link
00:57:18 Christine Rickabaugh: 🪆
00:57:26 Amanda Larson: Reacted to "🪆" with 🤣
00:57:29 Emily Mineart: Thank you!
00:57:35 Nicole Gresham: Thank you!
00:57:36 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: is Ketty in development? There is a GitHub repository for it.
00:58:10 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Thank you!
00:58:27 Whitney Russell: Is the pressbooks discount for an institutional membership?
00:58:32 Whitney Russell: or for individual plans per faculty
00:58:47 Daniel DuPont @ DCC (he/him): i'm a little intimidated but excited to learn all of this
00:58:49 Jon Drucker: Thanks, gtg
00:59:03 Amanda Larson: they can make you a custom plan too
00:59:16 Whitney Russell: ok great thanks!
00:59:45 Rose Adams: Thank you!
00:59:45 Sara Lynnore - St. Olaf College: Thank you!
00:59:46 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Thank you so much!
00:59:49 Danielle Poole: Thank you!
00:59:52 Micah Gjeltema: Thanks all!!!
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