Estimated reading time for this article:
35
minutes.
Speakers:
Karen: Welcome everyone to Pub101. My name is Karen Lauritsen, I'm with the Open Education Network and we made it. This is the seventh meeting of seven meetings, and so thank you all for staying with us and learning more about publishing open educational resources. So in terms of today, I'm going to spend really just a couple minutes recapping where we've been together. I will go over some options for continued support. I will ask for your feedback about the Pub101 synchronous meetings, and then Ariana Santiago, who is head of Open Education Services, University Libraries at University of Houston will spend the majority of the time with you talking about wrapping up a publication, what is involved, and options for what you can do with that process.
For example, there are workflows for finalizing and publishing OER. There are possibilities for how and where you can publish that open textbook. Recommendations for paying folks, you may have heard a little bit about this in the preceding weeks, but you'll hear a little bit more. And ideas for assessing your publishing program. And really that's a chance to reflect, see what worked for you, what didn't work for you and your authors, and ideas for moving forward. So that's what we'll spend most of today talking about with Ariana.
But first, a recap. You may recall when we started in this adventure together that publishing can mean many things, and we hope that you have heard that throughout the weeks. It might mean creating, modifying, posting, or archiving a work. It could be done just one person all by themselves, but more likely it's going to be done collaboratively. Maybe a group of authors, maybe some students, and then of course someone like you in a role supporting the author in their work. But that support can take many forms. We really have not wanted to suggest that there is a proper or right way to do it. What's right is what works for you in your context. And so we have aimed to share, if you will, a programmatic buffet that you can select from and see what works for you in your context.
Continuing our walk down memory lane, we've spent a lot of time anticipating common issues and anticipating what your support may look like. For example, maybe you're going to run a more DIY program where you say to your author, "Thank you so much for creating OER. We're very excited. Here is access to a publishing tool, let us know when you're close to being finished." Or maybe you're in a position where you can offer editing, design, and publishing services, a more elaborate model, if you will. We've talked about how to work with authors strategically, setting up expectations, making sure that you have boundaries, and just supporting one another in what can sometimes be an intense process. We've also spent some time talking about how textbooks in particular are structured content, and that makes them more accessible, that makes them recognizable as a textbook. And speaking of accessibility, we have really talked about how it's best to think about that and plan for it at the start of a project along with inclusion.
These are not things to think about at the end or to tack on and realize, "Oops, we should have done this." Really, it works much better to approach the project holistically. And we also talked about building your program by defining and communicating the parameters of your program. And a couple ways that you can do that officially is through your call for proposals and your memorandum of understanding. So that's all the stuff we've talked about very briefly over the last six weeks, and more to come today. You've also probably heard us say many times that you're not alone. And this work can sometimes feel really isolating, and so this is a reminder that the OEN and other open education communities are here to help. There are a lot of resources out there that you can modify for your program, and that it is important to look after yourself when doing this work.
Okay, now for a couple words about ongoing support, since we are getting ready to say goodbye. In the Pub101 context, that doesn't mean we have to cut all ties. So let's look at some ways that we can offer you ongoing support in your publishing efforts. There is of course the Pub101 orientation one-stop doc. We've shared this in every meeting. It links to all the things. That includes the curriculum. And just as a reminder, the curriculum does also have a new unit on generative AI and how that may impact your program or conversations that you have with your authors. So even though we didn't talk about that in the last few weeks, that resource is there for you. The one-stop doc also links to the videos of all of these presentations, transcripts, templates, and the slides that the presenters have shared. So if you find yourself a few months from now going, "Didn't we talk about this in Pub101, please come back to the orientation doc and hopefully you will find what you're looking for. But if not, let me know.
Many of you are probably joining us from institutions that are members of the OEN through a consortium, in which case you may feel one degree removed from the OEN support. But regardless, I'm going to talk about what is available to you, and I'm going to talk about that fairly broadly. So for example, you may have access to our Google group, which is a community of practice where people are often sharing questions or successes or frustrations, and there's a nice robust dialogue there about the work that we're doing and how we can support each other, and what has and hasn't worked for people. It's really helpful. We have workshop strategies, both when it comes to publishing and adoption, as well as open pedagogy. So those resources are there for you.
Anyone who is a member of the Open Education Network, their faculty can submit open textbook library reviews, and you can also access our data dashboard to manage those different workshops and programmatic aspects of your open-ed program. You could also use our manifold instance. If you are at an institution that may not have access or may not be in a position to pay for their own instance of a publishing tool, that is a benefit of joining the OEN as you can publish using our manifold. And then Pressbooks also extends a 30% discount to institutional OEN members. So those are just some reminders of how you can find support for your publishing efforts after Pub101.
Okay, it's so important for us to get your feedback. And Amanda, if I could ask you to please put this link in the chat, if you could go to z.umn.edu/pub25. That's /pub25. There is a short Google form, so if you could please go to the form now. I will also send a follow up email. Okay, Ariana's going to talk about wrapping up an open textbook project, as I mentioned, and as she gets her slides ready, we do have a reflection question for you. So you've worked really hard, a year or two of your life has gone by. What do you imagine success looks like with an OER publishing project? How will you know that this was time well spent? Does it mean feedback from students? Does it mean a relationship with faculty? Does it mean student savings? Please take a moment and think about what you imagine success looks like once you've wrapped up an OER publishing project. And with that, I will stop sharing and Ariana will step in. Thank you so much, Ariana, for joining us.
Ariana: Well, great. Thank you so much, Karen, for that introduction. I'm excited to be here and talk about wrapping up a publication, and in general the wrap up phase of OER publishing. So I'll start by sharing a little bit more about myself and where I'm coming from. So as Karen mentioned, I am the head of Open Education Services at the University of Houston Libraries. And in that role I lead a small library department that's focused entirely on advancing open education and providing services to support open education. So that includes supporting the adoption, adaptation, and creation of OER as well as open pedagogy.
I've been in an OER focused role since 2018, which is when the OER program launched at the University of Houston. And prior to that, my library experience was in instruction and outreach, mostly working with undergraduate students. And the work of my department, Open Education Services or OES, if you see that on the slides, broadly speaking, what we do is promote open educational resources and practices, we provide consultations and instruction related to that, and manage tools and workflows for open education.
And here's a little bit more about my background specifically in the publishing context. At UH, we launched an OER incentive program in 2018 and it was very focused on the textbook affordability aspect of OER. And OER creation was also included in that program, in addition to adopting or adapting existing material. So this got kicked off at the time with a lot of excitement for OER and institutional support around the program, though the publishing support was not fully developed at the time that it was launched. So I've been doing a lot of learning as I go in iteratively developing our publishing support over time. The Open Education Services department formed later in 2022, and that includes myself and our Open Education librarian, Kate McNally-Carter. And today we offer multiple types of incentives, for example, textbook affordability for open educational practices and OER professional development. So through the incentives we now offer, those include... I see in the chat someone said, "Kate is amazing." I agree.
So we include incentives for faculty to create OER, however, we specify that we do not support the publication of new open textbooks. So I'm going to explain that a little bit. This is a boundary that we've placed on our scope knowing the amount and type of support that can be involved, and that authors might expect for supporting the publication of full newly authored open textbooks. So instead, we encourage folks to publish ancillary materials and to adopt existing OER rather than primarily authoring brand new content. Though some of the OER that our faculty publish may end up having similarities to textbooks, for example, they may be heavily text-based, may be lengthy, have multiple chapters or units, be connected to learning outcomes. So it may be a blurry line, but it is an important part of how we communicate our scope to faculty.
So I wanted to give that part of our background as well. So throughout this presentation, I'll be referring to OER publishing or creation rather than specifically open textbook publishing. Some additional notes, we have an institutional Pressbooks network that we use for OER publishing and a DSpace institutional repository. And just overall, I would characterize our OER publishing as having started as an author DIY model where we offered funding, a publishing platform, and pretty minimal support, but that over time we've been building out from there and trying to improve the quality of our support without taking on too much at any one time. So that's my background so you know where I'm coming from.
I also want to share a brief outline of what I'll cover today. So first we'll talk about defining publication wrap-up with some examples of what that can entail. I'll share information about tools and workflows that can be involved, touch on paying people for their work and some considerations around that. And then end with assessment, or was it successful and how do you know? And then these are my rough time estimates, so you can know what to expect for each of those. Okay, let's get started with defining publication wrap-up. So I would like to start by throwing this question out to all of you. What do you think can be included in publication wrap-up? What does that mean to you? And feel free to add your thoughts and ideas in the chat.
Okay, we have some things being shared. Coffee with the team to talk about how it went, I love that. Gathering feedback. Having creators reflect on the process. Finalizing licenses, copyright statements, book metadata, and offboarding plan. Okay, I want to hear more about that. Sustainability and update plan if applicable. Okay, these are really good ideas. Okay, marketing, raising awareness, advertising, sharing out the resource. So we're seeing a few different kinds of potential wrap-up things coming up in the chat, which is good. So I'll go ahead and share what I thought it could be. So also I'll mention I thought of this session thinking, okay, wrap-up is the steps that it takes to get the thing published and anything else that might come at the end of a process. And I think there could be some standard steps, but also what this looks like in practice can vary widely from one institution to another potentially. And I think we're seeing a lot of those various ideas coming up in the chat so far.
So here are some things that I thought of. A final round of edits or copy edits potentially, like getting it ready for publication. And accessibility review, transferring content to a publishing software. Assigning a DOI or ISBN, if you do that at your institution. Same with print-on-demand. There's more. Archiving it in an institutional repository. Sharing out the new resource to OER repositories or referatories, so we saw some of that mentioned from what you all brought up. Promoting to other relevant groups and assessing outcomes. So there are a lot of things that I have listed here, but I want to stress that you do not have to do it all. There we go, you don't have to do it all.
I want to mention again the different approaches to publishing OER that I think have been shared throughout Pub101, where you may have an author DIY model that Karen described earlier or a full service publishing, that includes all of the bells and whistles, but there's also a broad range in between I think those ends of the spectrum. So I'm not listing all of these to say, "These are all of the things you have to do, but these are the kinds of things that you might do." And I don't do all of the things listed here at my institution, so I can't speak to all of them. For example, we don't manage print-on-demand, so I can't really go into detail about that, but you can at least know that it's one possible component of publication wrap-ups that you can consider for your program.
There could also be some program specific aspects of wrapping up a publication. For example, I think of things like requirements that are part of a formal program or a grant or incentive program you have, depending on how it's structured at your institution. For example, drawing on my institution, we require a written report from the faculty member and that they distribute a survey to students. And those are separate from the publication itself, but they are required elements in order to wrap up their project. You might have certain standards for the material that you're looking for, for example, around open licensing, accessibility, or peer review. And in general, you'll just want to keep in mind how the project was defined at the outset and whether it has met those goals or expectations.
Sometimes I think it can also be a little bit difficult to move something into the wrap-up phase, at least I found that to be the case. And that's because OER have that benefit of being able to be continually updated. And that's great for keeping the content current and relevant for our students, however, it could also make it a little bit unclear as to when an OER is done and ready to be published. So I think of the faculty author who has completed their OER and it's ready to be shared out with the world, but they're hesitant to go through the final steps for publication at that point because they'll make some updates next semester or next year based on student feedback. And then the next semester or the next year as well, because they're going to be continually updating it. So I think that's completely valid on their end, but I also think if it keeps getting pushed off until a few more updates are made, then their work may never end up being seen by other people outside of their class.
So in those cases, I think it can be helpful to encourage them to go ahead and publish their work now for the benefit of others who can adopt it, and to reassure them that nothing is ever perfect. And with OER especially, I think it can be okay sometimes for something to be good enough rather than perfect, because there is that need for others to adopt the material, and the material can be adapted and approved upon by others as well when the open license allows for it. And then you can also consider versioning or new editions once significant edits have been made. Go ahead and publish now, and then in, I don't know, a year or two years, however long, if you've made significant updates, we'll publish a second version.
So we've talked about publication wrap-up and what it can involve, and that it doesn't have to include everything, and some general and institutional considerations that we've talked about here.
So now I'll share what the process looks like at the University of Houston and how we think about publication wrap-up. So this outlines our process where a faculty member lets us know that they've finished developing their OER. And this comes after they've been using the material in their course for one academic year, so they've also had the opportunity to incorporate student feedback. And at this point they've distributed our student survey, completed their program report and those kinds of requirements. So they're like, "Okay, I'm done." Great. Then the OES department conducts a light review of the material using our checklist, and I'll pop in the chat a link to where you can find that if you'd like to open that up.
The resource we use for this, we call our quality checklist for creating OER, and that's a resource that we provide to faculty early on and encourage them to refer to it throughout developing their material. We have resources linked there and our standards are built into it. And then we also use that checklist for the review at this point where we identify revisions that they need to make prior to publication. So in our review, we're not dealing at all with the content or subject matter, but we're looking at open licensing, accessibility, attributions and citations. And publication info, so things like Metadata and Pressbooks settings. So then the faculty member makes the revisions we requested and they complete a Metadata template that we provide to them, and then my department uploads the items to our institutional repository using the Metadata template that they've completed.
And then we encourage the faculty member to submit their material to OER repositories for broader reach. And that last piece is where we don't have as developed of a process yet, but we're working towards that for the future. So this is what wrapping up a publication looks like for us. And then keep in mind it can be very different, depending on your institution, and there are some things we don't do that you might want to do. We don't transfer their content to the publishing platform. We don't do design and formatting, print-on-demand, or even a more thorough review of the material before giving that okay to publish it. So I hope this was a helpful example and discussion about defining publication wrap-up. Again, keeping in mind that there are other aspects as well outside of this example, but we'll go ahead and talk about publication tools and workflows next.
So I think some common questions around OER publishing relate to this aspect. What publishing platform should I use, what technology do we need access to, those kinds of things. And there are many different tools and software available for both publishing and distributing OER. So it could be a little overwhelming or maybe unclear where you should start or what tools you should use. So in determining your approach to publication platforms and tools, I would recommend considering these kinds of questions. So first, what is available through your institution or consortia? And that can make these kinds of decisions easier if you have free or discounted access to certain tools or built-in support for those tools as well.
What capacity do you have for supporting the use of publishing platforms? So there's a wide range here where at UH we offer Pressbooks, but currently all we do is manage user accounts, we provide general training and information. And we troubleshoot issues, we encourage others to reach out to us so we can help. But on the other hand, you could have someone responsible for formatting content in the publishing platform so that faculty authors don't have to take on that time commitment themselves. You can also consider what are the needs of your OER creators and users, and does that influence which tools that you use? So for example, is there a stronger need to develop certain types of material, and which publishing platforms are better suited to those types of materials? And will there be requirements around using certain tools or platforms?
Will authors have to use a designated publishing platform or do they have more flexibility around that? And this may go without saying, but all of these questions should be considered early on in the process way before you get to the point of wrapping up a publication. And I think that goes for a lot of the things that we're talking about today as well, but they are things that I think will come into play or that you may be interacting with more towards the end of a process, but you do want to put that consideration into it much earlier on in the beginning.
So I mentioned that there are many different tools that you might use. So I'm going to give an overview of many of those with some examples. First I want to say this is a non-exhaustive list, so I'm not including absolutely everything here, but it's like a sampling to give you an idea of what tools are out there that you can consider. And I've also grouped these into four different phases, which are connected to each other and sometimes overlapping with each other, but I thought it would be helpful to break it down this way and hopefully it makes sense as I move through it.
Okay, so starting with what I'm calling here the develop or development phase, this is when authors are developing their content. And typically this would take place in a word processing software of their choosing, such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs, though it could also take place directly in a publishing software such as Pressbooks, where authors can write directly in the editing dashboard if they choose. And there may be other publishing software that allow for that direct writing in the platform as well, and I'm not mentioning all of them here because I'm not aware of how each and every one of them works. And I just want to note that I tend to turn to Pressbooks as an example when I'm describing things because that's the one that I'm most familiar with that we use at UH, I just wanted to mention that as well.
Okay, so that was tools for development. Next we have the publish phase or where the material will actually live online when it's done. That's what I think of it anyway. So publishing software that can be used for this include things like Pressbooks, Manifold, and Ketty, and those are some options with support available through the Open Education Network. Some other options are on OER Commons, there is an authoring tool called Open Author, which is free to use. And LibreTexts is another one that I believe has an authoring tool that is free of charge, I'm pretty sure, but I'm not 100% on the details. So those are the kinds of publishing software that I'm thinking of when I talk about these kinds of tools.
However, publishing doesn't have to take place through those kinds of publishing software, and not everyone will have access maybe to Pressbooks or something else. And keep in mind, an OER could simply be a PDF of a completed work, it's not a format dependent. It could be a PDF, it could be a video, it could be all kinds of things. And a PDF for example could be hosted in an institutional repository, so I've listed that here as well. You could publish in an institutional repository, and an OER can even be published as a Google Doc or using the same tool that it was developed in, whatever that may be. So again, we're seeing some variation here.
And let's see. Next, we'll move on to the next phase, archive. This can be done in addition to using one of the publishing platforms that I listed in the previous column where you might deposit a copy of the completed work to an institutional repository for archiving and preservation purposes. And lastly, sharing and distributing the work takes place through OER repositories and referatories, sorry, stumble on that word sometimes. And just a quick note on the terminology here, at least as far as I know, a repository in this context refers to a website that actually hosts the material, like hosts the files of the material or the full content, whereas a referatory would be a website that links out to where the material is hosted elsewhere. Thank you for the confirmation of that, that's how I've always understood those terms.
So some places that you might further distribute the material are the Open Textbook library, OER Commons, and MERLOT. So those are examples of, I was going to say referatories, but also remember OER Commons has an authoring tool on the platform as well. So again, fits in both categories potentially. The Pressbooks Directory is available for material that was created using Pressbooks, and then there may be other local or subject-specific repositories as well. Again, there are lots of other places, don't have space or time to list them all here, but I wanted to give this overview of various tools and platforms that are involved in publishing and wrapping up a publication.
So as you can see, there are many possibilities, and I'll also share an example of what it looks like at my institution in terms of which tools that we use for these things. So for developing content, we encourage folks to use Word or Google Docs, whichever they prefer, because that will be easier to edit and collaborate with others compared to writing directly in Pressbooks, though some may choose to write directly in the publishing platform, it's really up to them. For the publishing platform, we strongly encourage Pressbooks because we provide it and they'll get some additional support from us, and in general we find it has the features and capabilities that meet the needs of many projects. However, we don't require that they use Pressbooks. And they can use whatever platform best meets the needs for their project, but in those cases, we make sure to let them know, "You're not going to have any technical support from us, we're not experts in all of these other platforms. You're free to use it, but we can't help you with it."
So we've had folks publish on LibreText, GitHub, and even Canvas where in those cases we're planning to export the files from Canvas and put them in our repository. And then when the material is completed, we add it to our DSpace repository, and then we ask the faculty member to submit their material to an OER repository, typically recommending OER Commons for its broader reach and usage, OER Text, which is a Texas OER repository for its local relevance, and the Open Textbook library for those that meet the criteria for submission to the OTL.
Okay, I think we have time to pause for my next question for you all. So I thought this would be a good time to do a temperature check and see what you're thinking. So my question for you is, are there existing tools, workflows, or resources available to you that can assist with wrapping up a publication? That can include things I haven't talked about or talked about yet, or I'm not planning on talking about. It could be any tool or resource. And it's also fine to say, "I don't know. I'm not sure yet," but I wanted to see if you all have thoughts about that yet.
Awesome. I see Amanda said, "I have a spreadsheet that I use to make sure all the tasks that needs to be done are complete." That is great, I love it. "We have Pressbooks access," in the chat, someone else, "Still at the beginning, so maybe not sure." Yeah, well feel free to keep putting your thoughts in the chat if you'd like to. I'll go ahead and move forward, but wanted to get you thinking about what could be already available that you could use, take advantage of, or incorporate into this work.
An important aspect of publication wrap-up is of course sharing it out with the world so that other people can use it. That relates a lot to the share and distribute part of the last few slides, where we were looking at certain tools and repositories you might use for this. And I want to add a few other thoughts around discoverability in general. So consider what audience you're trying to reach as that can influence which repositories you might submit the material to and additional strategies for promoting it. Also, building promotion of the material into the plan from the beginning can be an important step to sustaining the life of the work. And in the references, I linked to a presentation from the 2024 Open Texas Conference that really emphasized the idea of planning for promotion and sustainability early on.
Some additional strategies to enhance the promotion of OER can include checking to see if there are region or discipline-specific repositories or collections that you can add the material to. You might share an announcement of the new publication, for example, to the OEN Google group or other OER-related listservs. And on the slide I have an image of a sort of digital flyer that was shared along with the announcement of a new publication from Iowa State. So I thought that was really cool to have that visual that can easily share out the information about a new resource. And similarly, you could write up a news story featuring the new OER and the authors, telling the story of the work that can also help promote it. And you might work with faculty to identify listservs or communities within their disciplines that announcements can be shared to you as well to reach additional audiences who could really benefit from the work. And we may not always know where else it should be shared out within their professional communities, so that could be a really helpful step.
So I also feel like I can't talk about discoverability without highlighting the importance of metadata, though I also do not claim to be an in-depth metadata expert. So I'll recommend that you find the right people at your institution that you can talk with about ensuring appropriate metadata for OBR so that you can incorporate that into your publication wrap-up process. And to expand on that a little bit more, I wanted to share this metadata template that I mentioned earlier on and that we use a metadata template with our faculty authors. So this screenshot that you see here is of the actual document that we send to faculty to fill out. And I know you likely can't read all of this very clearly, so I've listed on the right-hand side all of the required fields that we collect, though there are additional optional fields in the document as well.
So you can see required things, or course name, file name, author, title, publication date, etc. So we use this template to obtain the accurate metadata from faculty, and then can follow up with them to clarify any questions that we might have. The fields in the template align with our DSpace institutional repository, and this template is only used for depositing material to our institutional repository, which the OES department, my department, does. And we developed a workflow for that along with our colleagues in other departments who deal with metadata and the repository. And something that's not shown in the screenshot here but is included in the document is the standard license agreement which faculty or authors also acknowledge when they add their name to the document, and that's the same agreement that people would see when they self-submit any items to the repository outside of OER as well. So we wanted to include that, make sure that license agreement didn't get skipped in this process.
So I want to share that as well. So we talked about tools, repositories, discoverability of metadata. Shifting gears a little bit, I wanted to talk a little bit about paying people for their work. And I know this has been discussed I think in some other sessions throughout Pub101 as well. I'll start with a brief overview of what I see as two primary models for paying people for creating OBR, the grant model and the incentive model. Where with the grant model, grantees provide a budget, funds are allocated for specific project needs, and you can hire individuals to be paid directly from the grant funds. The incentive model, on the other hand, the funding amount is determined by a selection committee, or it's not necessarily a budget provided by the people receiving the funds and the funds would be intended to incentivize the labor involved but not necessarily pay for a specific designated tasks like in a grant.
And you might be limited to paying only specific individuals who are associated with your institution rather than being able to hire for additional roles. So this is very generalized and there may be other models as well as variations on these, but I wanted to mention this because my context is using the incentive model. So I don't have experience operating an actual grant program, so I can't speak to that. And also how your program is set up to pay people if you have funding available will impact of course your process around doing so. For us, it's set up so that faculty receive half of their total award amount up front at the time that they're awarded, and then they receive the second half when they've completed all program requirements. And I've seen that structure at other institutions as well. So some challenges that I've encountered and that might come up and you want to be prepared for as much as you can include some of the things here, faculty maybe not being fully informed or just not knowing either when they will get paid or who to direct their questions to.
So if the authors are unclear, if they don't understand the process, the timeline or what to expect, that's not great. So you want to avoid that. Payments get delayed, you think someone will receive their funds at a certain time and they don't. Sometimes that could be for known just like logistical timeline reasons or sometimes it could be for completely unknown reasons, and you want to figure out why did this happen. Maybe faculty think they will be able to do X thing with the funds, but then it turns out that they can't. And I think that relates back to understanding the process and all of the information. That may be also more likely to come up under the grant model, at least for us with our incentive program, there are not restrictions on what they can do with the funds, but that also may not be the case everywhere.
And also faculty leave the institution, now what? They can still get the rest of their funding. So I've had that happen a couple of times, both when someone had completed their project and then were leaving shortly after, or when maybe one collaborator leaves an institution mid project but another collaborator is still employed, so can we still pay the other person? And for me so far in these kinds of instances, it has still made sense to get that person the rest of the funds, and our finance team was able to figure out how to make that happen. But ideally these are scenarios that you would have a plan for rather than being surprised by them like I was, and then just hoping you can make it work. So those are some potential challenges that can come up at the end of a project, assuming that funds are being distributed at the end of a project.
And communication all around I think is how you can try to mitigate some of those challenges. So communicating the payment information and process to faculty or authors at multiple points, for example on your website with your program information so they can be informed going into it. If you give any informational presentations about your program when you're accepting applications, that can be a good time to explain the process to interested applicants. When you select a project and let them know they're being awarded, that's a great time to outline the whole process again when it comes to payments, and then when a project is wrapping up would be another point to remind them of the timeline and the process. So just constant communication. And I think I probably should have flipped these points on the slides, because to get to that point, you will need to do a lot of internal communication so that you understand the process. And not just you, but other people involved in it as well so that everyone understands the process, and then you can communicate the expectations to faculty.
I also think it's a good idea to revisit this after it's been established, especially whenever different people come on board or processes change, to make sure that everyone's still on the same page. And then I have a few thoughts I want to share on just how to ensure that the labor that goes into creating OER gets recognized through compensation, at least based on my experience with the incentive model. So one, find out who you're able to pay or not pay, an assumption could be that only full-time faculty can receive funds, but then you might find that actually a broader range of people who contribute to the OER can receive funds as well, such as maybe adjunct or graduate student instructors or even instructional designers. And that can open up the opportunity to have more folks involved who may not have thought they could be.
You can also encourage co-applicants or people applying as a group, again in the assumption that there's some program they're applying to, and that lets people know that collaboration is encouraged and they don't have to go it alone, and also provides a structure for funds to be given to more people as well. And with that possibility of group applications, we give groups the autonomy to decide how they want to divide the funds amongst themselves. You get this much funding total for your group, let us know how you want to divide it. Most end up splitting it evenly, but then we also have cases the group discusses and decide that certain individuals should receive more of the funds based on the amount of work that each person will be doing. Okay, moving on to our last topic under the umbrella of publication wrap-up assessment, or was it successful? How do you know? And I'm really glad we started with that opening reflection of what do you imagine success looks like with an OER publishing project, because I think a lot of those things will come back into play here as well.
Okay, so success can mean different things for different people and institutions, and how you think about success and assessing your OER publishing program or services will vary based on your goals. So I have some example goals included here. Not to say that anyone should be assessing all of these, but to show that goals can be focused more in some areas than others. And that I don't think success has to be measured by every single one of these. So just to get you thinking about your goals and what they could be, we have things here like reducing the cost of course materials and reaching audiences beyond your institution. And I also relate to wanting all of these to be your goals, but like I said, it doesn't have to be all of these. You can see how these are each a little bit different.
And so with an idea of what goals you're trying to achieve, you can think about how you'll know if you've met those goals. So some potential indicators of success could be estimated textbook costs that have been removed by using OER if one of your primary goals is reducing cost of course materials. So you can see how some of these relate more strongly to some of these example goals, and then how you'll know if you've met those goals. For example, students or faculties experience with a material or assessment of student learning. Some other potential indicators of success could be adoptions beyond your institution. Again, thinking if one of your goals is that broader reach of the material outside of your institution, or things like looking at published reviews of the material, accessibility of a content, or even author's experience through the process of developing it.
And then getting a little more specific from there, the assessment strategies you might use would be informed by your goals and those indicators of how you've met your goals. So these are some ideas of how you could gather that information to assess your experience, learning about the student experience or the faculty experience using the material or developing it. And some of those can be done through similar methods like surveys and focus groups. You might audit the completed OER for alignment with your goals. For example, its effectiveness with regard to course learning outcomes or student engagement, or the accessibility of the content. Or gathering that information about the reach and impact of the OER, like any usage data that you have access to where it's been adopted by others.
And lastly, I am a huge proponent of reflective practice, just regularly reflecting on and learning from your experiences. And that can be as simple as building in that time to reflect and ask questions like, what are we doing well? What could we be doing better? How can we improve on this a little bit for the next time?
So that was a really quick overview of the assessment piece, but I wanted to make sure we left some time for questions. But I also want to reiterate again that I've presented here a broad range of ideas for how you can assess a publication or your publishing services, but you don't have to...in your context and capacity. So that was everything I have for today. I included on the slides that resource with the quality checklist for creating OER and one conference presentation I referenced. But yeah, we have some time for questions, discussion, etc. Thank you.
Amanda: Thank you, Ariana. That was fantastic. You did have an immediate ask for could you share your metadata template?
Ariana: Yes. If you email me, yes, because that's not available online anywhere, but I will happily share a copy with anyone.
Amanda: All right, friends, do you have any questions for Ariana? I'm going to go back and look in the chat and see if I missed any, but feel free to take that time to either put them in the chat or you can come off of mute and ask directly.
"Thank you so much, I'm wondering how much of a change do you consider enough change for a new version?"
Ariana: That is a good question. Let me think. I'm imagining a faculty member has asked me this and how I would describe it to them. If there are relatively minor changes that could be throughout a work, I'm trying to think how would I describe the difference between minor changes, but anything that gets to the significant level. If you are maybe significantly editing or adding new chapters, removing chapters, adding a significant chunk of new content, anything that substantially changes the content, I think I would recommend a new version. Amanda, please feel free to add into this, but I also want to add that I think either way, adding in a record of what changes have been made would be helpful, even if it doesn't constitute a new edition, to add somewhere in the front or back matter, it was updated at this time and a description of the changes that were made. Amanda, I would be interested to hear your thoughts as well.
Amanda: Yeah, that's what I'm grabbing right now. I have a book that I work pretty closely with called Choosing & Using Sources, and I implemented when I arrived here at Ohio State, I implemented a version page inside of this book. And you'll see from that that I try to make my author batch their updates on an update cycle. So we update our book in preferably August and May, but sometimes January happens and then I just try to make a list of everything that happens. So we try to batch those updates, but if it's just typos, I don't consider that a new version. And you might consider it...if you wanted to keep track of that separately. But I wouldn't say if there was a chapter that had a typo that I'm going to go and make a new version update for that. And I think also you get to decide, are you doing full version updates?
So we're getting ready to publish another version update for this that'll be like, I think we're going to do either 4.5 or 5.0, but it's just the addition of audio to the book, and then there'll be another update in August. And depending on how we went with that decision this time, that'll either be the next 5.0 or it'll be 5.5 or whatever. Christine asks, "For the new version definition, I would also consider if other institutions are using the book, are we going to throw off their plan by changing some of their content?" And that's why our updates happen in May and August specifically, trying to hit that sweet spot before the semester starts and that the semester ends for the year. And it's really hard to get authors not to mess with things in between those times, but usually I'm like, "Hey." What about you, Ari?
Ariana: Yeah, that's a really good point. And I would say we actually haven't had that level of conversation about updates with our faculty authors. I think that's a good thing for us to start incorporating as well for those who have created material in the past couple of years and maybe updating it when we get in touch with them, mention to consider the timing of it, especially if others are using your material. I do see another question in the chat.
Amanda: Yeah, William asks, "How do you measure assessment success? So for instance, if a class is using a commercial textbook in the previous year, but is now using OER this year, is there a good way to measure the impact of the OER?"
Ariana: Yeah, and hopefully I'm understanding the question correctly. I think that relates back to is that something that is a primary goal of your OER program or publishing program? And if that is a strong motivator and something that you're striving for, is that affordability of course materials, then that would be something that you measure and then assess. So for example, at my institution, we did start with that focus, and so we have been tracking everyone that goes through our program. We've always had that. We collect the information and do the math and say, "Here's an estimate of textbook costs that were removed from these courses that are now using OER or free resources." So we have the information that we could then share the success of the program through that lens. I hope that makes sense, but let me know if I was missing part of the question there.
Amanda: And then a follow-up question on versioning, "Do you create a new bookshelf for the new version and preserve the old one, or just keep it in the platform? Or do you build upon the previous one?
Ariana: That's a good question. I think for, again, those minor changes like typos, little things here and there, I wouldn't create a new version. But for something that's more significant, where it's the same work but a new updated version of it that has more substantial changes, I'm leaning towards creating a new bookshelf. And there may be different cases where it makes sense to do different things, but especially other people may be adopting that first version and now there's that second version that they can use in their separate things, in separate spaces.
Amanda: And with Pressbooks, you have the option of cloning. So it does make that a little bit easier, but it also makes it hard. I decided to do all of the work in choosing your sources inside of the book. We tried doing a production copy and it broke our glossary when we tried to move it back to a live version in a different book. And so now I just have my author do all of her edits inside the same shell.
In spirit of time, thank you all for your questions. I put the survey form back in the chat. It is now open. I'm looking at it and have access to it, so I'm hoping that you will too. If not, Karen will be sending it out. And thank you so much, Ariana, for coming and sharing your expertise with us today.
Ariana: Yeah, thank you so much. I was so glad to be here. I wish I left more time for questions. Feel free to reach out to me if you want to chat about any of this more. Thank you.
END OF VIDEO
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Hosted by Open Education Network’s Karen Lauritsen, the seventh and final session of our 2025 Pub101 series features Ariana Santiago (she/her) of the University of Houston, who discusses items to consider as you wrap up an open textbook project. Don’t miss her insights on finalizing OER, preparing for publication, sharing new OER, paying your staff, assessing your program, and more.
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.
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
Speakers:
- Karen Lauritsen (Senior Director, Publishing, Open Education Network)
- Ariana Santiago (Head of Open Education Services, University Libraries, University of Houston)
Karen: Welcome everyone to Pub101. My name is Karen Lauritsen, I'm with the Open Education Network and we made it. This is the seventh meeting of seven meetings, and so thank you all for staying with us and learning more about publishing open educational resources. So in terms of today, I'm going to spend really just a couple minutes recapping where we've been together. I will go over some options for continued support. I will ask for your feedback about the Pub101 synchronous meetings, and then Ariana Santiago, who is head of Open Education Services, University Libraries at University of Houston will spend the majority of the time with you talking about wrapping up a publication, what is involved, and options for what you can do with that process.
For example, there are workflows for finalizing and publishing OER. There are possibilities for how and where you can publish that open textbook. Recommendations for paying folks, you may have heard a little bit about this in the preceding weeks, but you'll hear a little bit more. And ideas for assessing your publishing program. And really that's a chance to reflect, see what worked for you, what didn't work for you and your authors, and ideas for moving forward. So that's what we'll spend most of today talking about with Ariana.
But first, a recap. You may recall when we started in this adventure together that publishing can mean many things, and we hope that you have heard that throughout the weeks. It might mean creating, modifying, posting, or archiving a work. It could be done just one person all by themselves, but more likely it's going to be done collaboratively. Maybe a group of authors, maybe some students, and then of course someone like you in a role supporting the author in their work. But that support can take many forms. We really have not wanted to suggest that there is a proper or right way to do it. What's right is what works for you in your context. And so we have aimed to share, if you will, a programmatic buffet that you can select from and see what works for you in your context.
Continuing our walk down memory lane, we've spent a lot of time anticipating common issues and anticipating what your support may look like. For example, maybe you're going to run a more DIY program where you say to your author, "Thank you so much for creating OER. We're very excited. Here is access to a publishing tool, let us know when you're close to being finished." Or maybe you're in a position where you can offer editing, design, and publishing services, a more elaborate model, if you will. We've talked about how to work with authors strategically, setting up expectations, making sure that you have boundaries, and just supporting one another in what can sometimes be an intense process. We've also spent some time talking about how textbooks in particular are structured content, and that makes them more accessible, that makes them recognizable as a textbook. And speaking of accessibility, we have really talked about how it's best to think about that and plan for it at the start of a project along with inclusion.
These are not things to think about at the end or to tack on and realize, "Oops, we should have done this." Really, it works much better to approach the project holistically. And we also talked about building your program by defining and communicating the parameters of your program. And a couple ways that you can do that officially is through your call for proposals and your memorandum of understanding. So that's all the stuff we've talked about very briefly over the last six weeks, and more to come today. You've also probably heard us say many times that you're not alone. And this work can sometimes feel really isolating, and so this is a reminder that the OEN and other open education communities are here to help. There are a lot of resources out there that you can modify for your program, and that it is important to look after yourself when doing this work.
Okay, now for a couple words about ongoing support, since we are getting ready to say goodbye. In the Pub101 context, that doesn't mean we have to cut all ties. So let's look at some ways that we can offer you ongoing support in your publishing efforts. There is of course the Pub101 orientation one-stop doc. We've shared this in every meeting. It links to all the things. That includes the curriculum. And just as a reminder, the curriculum does also have a new unit on generative AI and how that may impact your program or conversations that you have with your authors. So even though we didn't talk about that in the last few weeks, that resource is there for you. The one-stop doc also links to the videos of all of these presentations, transcripts, templates, and the slides that the presenters have shared. So if you find yourself a few months from now going, "Didn't we talk about this in Pub101, please come back to the orientation doc and hopefully you will find what you're looking for. But if not, let me know.
Many of you are probably joining us from institutions that are members of the OEN through a consortium, in which case you may feel one degree removed from the OEN support. But regardless, I'm going to talk about what is available to you, and I'm going to talk about that fairly broadly. So for example, you may have access to our Google group, which is a community of practice where people are often sharing questions or successes or frustrations, and there's a nice robust dialogue there about the work that we're doing and how we can support each other, and what has and hasn't worked for people. It's really helpful. We have workshop strategies, both when it comes to publishing and adoption, as well as open pedagogy. So those resources are there for you.
Anyone who is a member of the Open Education Network, their faculty can submit open textbook library reviews, and you can also access our data dashboard to manage those different workshops and programmatic aspects of your open-ed program. You could also use our manifold instance. If you are at an institution that may not have access or may not be in a position to pay for their own instance of a publishing tool, that is a benefit of joining the OEN as you can publish using our manifold. And then Pressbooks also extends a 30% discount to institutional OEN members. So those are just some reminders of how you can find support for your publishing efforts after Pub101.
Okay, it's so important for us to get your feedback. And Amanda, if I could ask you to please put this link in the chat, if you could go to z.umn.edu/pub25. That's /pub25. There is a short Google form, so if you could please go to the form now. I will also send a follow up email. Okay, Ariana's going to talk about wrapping up an open textbook project, as I mentioned, and as she gets her slides ready, we do have a reflection question for you. So you've worked really hard, a year or two of your life has gone by. What do you imagine success looks like with an OER publishing project? How will you know that this was time well spent? Does it mean feedback from students? Does it mean a relationship with faculty? Does it mean student savings? Please take a moment and think about what you imagine success looks like once you've wrapped up an OER publishing project. And with that, I will stop sharing and Ariana will step in. Thank you so much, Ariana, for joining us.
Ariana: Well, great. Thank you so much, Karen, for that introduction. I'm excited to be here and talk about wrapping up a publication, and in general the wrap up phase of OER publishing. So I'll start by sharing a little bit more about myself and where I'm coming from. So as Karen mentioned, I am the head of Open Education Services at the University of Houston Libraries. And in that role I lead a small library department that's focused entirely on advancing open education and providing services to support open education. So that includes supporting the adoption, adaptation, and creation of OER as well as open pedagogy.
I've been in an OER focused role since 2018, which is when the OER program launched at the University of Houston. And prior to that, my library experience was in instruction and outreach, mostly working with undergraduate students. And the work of my department, Open Education Services or OES, if you see that on the slides, broadly speaking, what we do is promote open educational resources and practices, we provide consultations and instruction related to that, and manage tools and workflows for open education.
And here's a little bit more about my background specifically in the publishing context. At UH, we launched an OER incentive program in 2018 and it was very focused on the textbook affordability aspect of OER. And OER creation was also included in that program, in addition to adopting or adapting existing material. So this got kicked off at the time with a lot of excitement for OER and institutional support around the program, though the publishing support was not fully developed at the time that it was launched. So I've been doing a lot of learning as I go in iteratively developing our publishing support over time. The Open Education Services department formed later in 2022, and that includes myself and our Open Education librarian, Kate McNally-Carter. And today we offer multiple types of incentives, for example, textbook affordability for open educational practices and OER professional development. So through the incentives we now offer, those include... I see in the chat someone said, "Kate is amazing." I agree.
So we include incentives for faculty to create OER, however, we specify that we do not support the publication of new open textbooks. So I'm going to explain that a little bit. This is a boundary that we've placed on our scope knowing the amount and type of support that can be involved, and that authors might expect for supporting the publication of full newly authored open textbooks. So instead, we encourage folks to publish ancillary materials and to adopt existing OER rather than primarily authoring brand new content. Though some of the OER that our faculty publish may end up having similarities to textbooks, for example, they may be heavily text-based, may be lengthy, have multiple chapters or units, be connected to learning outcomes. So it may be a blurry line, but it is an important part of how we communicate our scope to faculty.
So I wanted to give that part of our background as well. So throughout this presentation, I'll be referring to OER publishing or creation rather than specifically open textbook publishing. Some additional notes, we have an institutional Pressbooks network that we use for OER publishing and a DSpace institutional repository. And just overall, I would characterize our OER publishing as having started as an author DIY model where we offered funding, a publishing platform, and pretty minimal support, but that over time we've been building out from there and trying to improve the quality of our support without taking on too much at any one time. So that's my background so you know where I'm coming from.
I also want to share a brief outline of what I'll cover today. So first we'll talk about defining publication wrap-up with some examples of what that can entail. I'll share information about tools and workflows that can be involved, touch on paying people for their work and some considerations around that. And then end with assessment, or was it successful and how do you know? And then these are my rough time estimates, so you can know what to expect for each of those. Okay, let's get started with defining publication wrap-up. So I would like to start by throwing this question out to all of you. What do you think can be included in publication wrap-up? What does that mean to you? And feel free to add your thoughts and ideas in the chat.
Okay, we have some things being shared. Coffee with the team to talk about how it went, I love that. Gathering feedback. Having creators reflect on the process. Finalizing licenses, copyright statements, book metadata, and offboarding plan. Okay, I want to hear more about that. Sustainability and update plan if applicable. Okay, these are really good ideas. Okay, marketing, raising awareness, advertising, sharing out the resource. So we're seeing a few different kinds of potential wrap-up things coming up in the chat, which is good. So I'll go ahead and share what I thought it could be. So also I'll mention I thought of this session thinking, okay, wrap-up is the steps that it takes to get the thing published and anything else that might come at the end of a process. And I think there could be some standard steps, but also what this looks like in practice can vary widely from one institution to another potentially. And I think we're seeing a lot of those various ideas coming up in the chat so far.
So here are some things that I thought of. A final round of edits or copy edits potentially, like getting it ready for publication. And accessibility review, transferring content to a publishing software. Assigning a DOI or ISBN, if you do that at your institution. Same with print-on-demand. There's more. Archiving it in an institutional repository. Sharing out the new resource to OER repositories or referatories, so we saw some of that mentioned from what you all brought up. Promoting to other relevant groups and assessing outcomes. So there are a lot of things that I have listed here, but I want to stress that you do not have to do it all. There we go, you don't have to do it all.
I want to mention again the different approaches to publishing OER that I think have been shared throughout Pub101, where you may have an author DIY model that Karen described earlier or a full service publishing, that includes all of the bells and whistles, but there's also a broad range in between I think those ends of the spectrum. So I'm not listing all of these to say, "These are all of the things you have to do, but these are the kinds of things that you might do." And I don't do all of the things listed here at my institution, so I can't speak to all of them. For example, we don't manage print-on-demand, so I can't really go into detail about that, but you can at least know that it's one possible component of publication wrap-ups that you can consider for your program.
There could also be some program specific aspects of wrapping up a publication. For example, I think of things like requirements that are part of a formal program or a grant or incentive program you have, depending on how it's structured at your institution. For example, drawing on my institution, we require a written report from the faculty member and that they distribute a survey to students. And those are separate from the publication itself, but they are required elements in order to wrap up their project. You might have certain standards for the material that you're looking for, for example, around open licensing, accessibility, or peer review. And in general, you'll just want to keep in mind how the project was defined at the outset and whether it has met those goals or expectations.
Sometimes I think it can also be a little bit difficult to move something into the wrap-up phase, at least I found that to be the case. And that's because OER have that benefit of being able to be continually updated. And that's great for keeping the content current and relevant for our students, however, it could also make it a little bit unclear as to when an OER is done and ready to be published. So I think of the faculty author who has completed their OER and it's ready to be shared out with the world, but they're hesitant to go through the final steps for publication at that point because they'll make some updates next semester or next year based on student feedback. And then the next semester or the next year as well, because they're going to be continually updating it. So I think that's completely valid on their end, but I also think if it keeps getting pushed off until a few more updates are made, then their work may never end up being seen by other people outside of their class.
So in those cases, I think it can be helpful to encourage them to go ahead and publish their work now for the benefit of others who can adopt it, and to reassure them that nothing is ever perfect. And with OER especially, I think it can be okay sometimes for something to be good enough rather than perfect, because there is that need for others to adopt the material, and the material can be adapted and approved upon by others as well when the open license allows for it. And then you can also consider versioning or new editions once significant edits have been made. Go ahead and publish now, and then in, I don't know, a year or two years, however long, if you've made significant updates, we'll publish a second version.
So we've talked about publication wrap-up and what it can involve, and that it doesn't have to include everything, and some general and institutional considerations that we've talked about here.
So now I'll share what the process looks like at the University of Houston and how we think about publication wrap-up. So this outlines our process where a faculty member lets us know that they've finished developing their OER. And this comes after they've been using the material in their course for one academic year, so they've also had the opportunity to incorporate student feedback. And at this point they've distributed our student survey, completed their program report and those kinds of requirements. So they're like, "Okay, I'm done." Great. Then the OES department conducts a light review of the material using our checklist, and I'll pop in the chat a link to where you can find that if you'd like to open that up.
The resource we use for this, we call our quality checklist for creating OER, and that's a resource that we provide to faculty early on and encourage them to refer to it throughout developing their material. We have resources linked there and our standards are built into it. And then we also use that checklist for the review at this point where we identify revisions that they need to make prior to publication. So in our review, we're not dealing at all with the content or subject matter, but we're looking at open licensing, accessibility, attributions and citations. And publication info, so things like Metadata and Pressbooks settings. So then the faculty member makes the revisions we requested and they complete a Metadata template that we provide to them, and then my department uploads the items to our institutional repository using the Metadata template that they've completed.
And then we encourage the faculty member to submit their material to OER repositories for broader reach. And that last piece is where we don't have as developed of a process yet, but we're working towards that for the future. So this is what wrapping up a publication looks like for us. And then keep in mind it can be very different, depending on your institution, and there are some things we don't do that you might want to do. We don't transfer their content to the publishing platform. We don't do design and formatting, print-on-demand, or even a more thorough review of the material before giving that okay to publish it. So I hope this was a helpful example and discussion about defining publication wrap-up. Again, keeping in mind that there are other aspects as well outside of this example, but we'll go ahead and talk about publication tools and workflows next.
So I think some common questions around OER publishing relate to this aspect. What publishing platform should I use, what technology do we need access to, those kinds of things. And there are many different tools and software available for both publishing and distributing OER. So it could be a little overwhelming or maybe unclear where you should start or what tools you should use. So in determining your approach to publication platforms and tools, I would recommend considering these kinds of questions. So first, what is available through your institution or consortia? And that can make these kinds of decisions easier if you have free or discounted access to certain tools or built-in support for those tools as well.
What capacity do you have for supporting the use of publishing platforms? So there's a wide range here where at UH we offer Pressbooks, but currently all we do is manage user accounts, we provide general training and information. And we troubleshoot issues, we encourage others to reach out to us so we can help. But on the other hand, you could have someone responsible for formatting content in the publishing platform so that faculty authors don't have to take on that time commitment themselves. You can also consider what are the needs of your OER creators and users, and does that influence which tools that you use? So for example, is there a stronger need to develop certain types of material, and which publishing platforms are better suited to those types of materials? And will there be requirements around using certain tools or platforms?
Will authors have to use a designated publishing platform or do they have more flexibility around that? And this may go without saying, but all of these questions should be considered early on in the process way before you get to the point of wrapping up a publication. And I think that goes for a lot of the things that we're talking about today as well, but they are things that I think will come into play or that you may be interacting with more towards the end of a process, but you do want to put that consideration into it much earlier on in the beginning.
So I mentioned that there are many different tools that you might use. So I'm going to give an overview of many of those with some examples. First I want to say this is a non-exhaustive list, so I'm not including absolutely everything here, but it's like a sampling to give you an idea of what tools are out there that you can consider. And I've also grouped these into four different phases, which are connected to each other and sometimes overlapping with each other, but I thought it would be helpful to break it down this way and hopefully it makes sense as I move through it.
Okay, so starting with what I'm calling here the develop or development phase, this is when authors are developing their content. And typically this would take place in a word processing software of their choosing, such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs, though it could also take place directly in a publishing software such as Pressbooks, where authors can write directly in the editing dashboard if they choose. And there may be other publishing software that allow for that direct writing in the platform as well, and I'm not mentioning all of them here because I'm not aware of how each and every one of them works. And I just want to note that I tend to turn to Pressbooks as an example when I'm describing things because that's the one that I'm most familiar with that we use at UH, I just wanted to mention that as well.
Okay, so that was tools for development. Next we have the publish phase or where the material will actually live online when it's done. That's what I think of it anyway. So publishing software that can be used for this include things like Pressbooks, Manifold, and Ketty, and those are some options with support available through the Open Education Network. Some other options are on OER Commons, there is an authoring tool called Open Author, which is free to use. And LibreTexts is another one that I believe has an authoring tool that is free of charge, I'm pretty sure, but I'm not 100% on the details. So those are the kinds of publishing software that I'm thinking of when I talk about these kinds of tools.
However, publishing doesn't have to take place through those kinds of publishing software, and not everyone will have access maybe to Pressbooks or something else. And keep in mind, an OER could simply be a PDF of a completed work, it's not a format dependent. It could be a PDF, it could be a video, it could be all kinds of things. And a PDF for example could be hosted in an institutional repository, so I've listed that here as well. You could publish in an institutional repository, and an OER can even be published as a Google Doc or using the same tool that it was developed in, whatever that may be. So again, we're seeing some variation here.
And let's see. Next, we'll move on to the next phase, archive. This can be done in addition to using one of the publishing platforms that I listed in the previous column where you might deposit a copy of the completed work to an institutional repository for archiving and preservation purposes. And lastly, sharing and distributing the work takes place through OER repositories and referatories, sorry, stumble on that word sometimes. And just a quick note on the terminology here, at least as far as I know, a repository in this context refers to a website that actually hosts the material, like hosts the files of the material or the full content, whereas a referatory would be a website that links out to where the material is hosted elsewhere. Thank you for the confirmation of that, that's how I've always understood those terms.
So some places that you might further distribute the material are the Open Textbook library, OER Commons, and MERLOT. So those are examples of, I was going to say referatories, but also remember OER Commons has an authoring tool on the platform as well. So again, fits in both categories potentially. The Pressbooks Directory is available for material that was created using Pressbooks, and then there may be other local or subject-specific repositories as well. Again, there are lots of other places, don't have space or time to list them all here, but I wanted to give this overview of various tools and platforms that are involved in publishing and wrapping up a publication.
So as you can see, there are many possibilities, and I'll also share an example of what it looks like at my institution in terms of which tools that we use for these things. So for developing content, we encourage folks to use Word or Google Docs, whichever they prefer, because that will be easier to edit and collaborate with others compared to writing directly in Pressbooks, though some may choose to write directly in the publishing platform, it's really up to them. For the publishing platform, we strongly encourage Pressbooks because we provide it and they'll get some additional support from us, and in general we find it has the features and capabilities that meet the needs of many projects. However, we don't require that they use Pressbooks. And they can use whatever platform best meets the needs for their project, but in those cases, we make sure to let them know, "You're not going to have any technical support from us, we're not experts in all of these other platforms. You're free to use it, but we can't help you with it."
So we've had folks publish on LibreText, GitHub, and even Canvas where in those cases we're planning to export the files from Canvas and put them in our repository. And then when the material is completed, we add it to our DSpace repository, and then we ask the faculty member to submit their material to an OER repository, typically recommending OER Commons for its broader reach and usage, OER Text, which is a Texas OER repository for its local relevance, and the Open Textbook library for those that meet the criteria for submission to the OTL.
Okay, I think we have time to pause for my next question for you all. So I thought this would be a good time to do a temperature check and see what you're thinking. So my question for you is, are there existing tools, workflows, or resources available to you that can assist with wrapping up a publication? That can include things I haven't talked about or talked about yet, or I'm not planning on talking about. It could be any tool or resource. And it's also fine to say, "I don't know. I'm not sure yet," but I wanted to see if you all have thoughts about that yet.
Awesome. I see Amanda said, "I have a spreadsheet that I use to make sure all the tasks that needs to be done are complete." That is great, I love it. "We have Pressbooks access," in the chat, someone else, "Still at the beginning, so maybe not sure." Yeah, well feel free to keep putting your thoughts in the chat if you'd like to. I'll go ahead and move forward, but wanted to get you thinking about what could be already available that you could use, take advantage of, or incorporate into this work.
An important aspect of publication wrap-up is of course sharing it out with the world so that other people can use it. That relates a lot to the share and distribute part of the last few slides, where we were looking at certain tools and repositories you might use for this. And I want to add a few other thoughts around discoverability in general. So consider what audience you're trying to reach as that can influence which repositories you might submit the material to and additional strategies for promoting it. Also, building promotion of the material into the plan from the beginning can be an important step to sustaining the life of the work. And in the references, I linked to a presentation from the 2024 Open Texas Conference that really emphasized the idea of planning for promotion and sustainability early on.
Some additional strategies to enhance the promotion of OER can include checking to see if there are region or discipline-specific repositories or collections that you can add the material to. You might share an announcement of the new publication, for example, to the OEN Google group or other OER-related listservs. And on the slide I have an image of a sort of digital flyer that was shared along with the announcement of a new publication from Iowa State. So I thought that was really cool to have that visual that can easily share out the information about a new resource. And similarly, you could write up a news story featuring the new OER and the authors, telling the story of the work that can also help promote it. And you might work with faculty to identify listservs or communities within their disciplines that announcements can be shared to you as well to reach additional audiences who could really benefit from the work. And we may not always know where else it should be shared out within their professional communities, so that could be a really helpful step.
So I also feel like I can't talk about discoverability without highlighting the importance of metadata, though I also do not claim to be an in-depth metadata expert. So I'll recommend that you find the right people at your institution that you can talk with about ensuring appropriate metadata for OBR so that you can incorporate that into your publication wrap-up process. And to expand on that a little bit more, I wanted to share this metadata template that I mentioned earlier on and that we use a metadata template with our faculty authors. So this screenshot that you see here is of the actual document that we send to faculty to fill out. And I know you likely can't read all of this very clearly, so I've listed on the right-hand side all of the required fields that we collect, though there are additional optional fields in the document as well.
So you can see required things, or course name, file name, author, title, publication date, etc. So we use this template to obtain the accurate metadata from faculty, and then can follow up with them to clarify any questions that we might have. The fields in the template align with our DSpace institutional repository, and this template is only used for depositing material to our institutional repository, which the OES department, my department, does. And we developed a workflow for that along with our colleagues in other departments who deal with metadata and the repository. And something that's not shown in the screenshot here but is included in the document is the standard license agreement which faculty or authors also acknowledge when they add their name to the document, and that's the same agreement that people would see when they self-submit any items to the repository outside of OER as well. So we wanted to include that, make sure that license agreement didn't get skipped in this process.
So I want to share that as well. So we talked about tools, repositories, discoverability of metadata. Shifting gears a little bit, I wanted to talk a little bit about paying people for their work. And I know this has been discussed I think in some other sessions throughout Pub101 as well. I'll start with a brief overview of what I see as two primary models for paying people for creating OBR, the grant model and the incentive model. Where with the grant model, grantees provide a budget, funds are allocated for specific project needs, and you can hire individuals to be paid directly from the grant funds. The incentive model, on the other hand, the funding amount is determined by a selection committee, or it's not necessarily a budget provided by the people receiving the funds and the funds would be intended to incentivize the labor involved but not necessarily pay for a specific designated tasks like in a grant.
And you might be limited to paying only specific individuals who are associated with your institution rather than being able to hire for additional roles. So this is very generalized and there may be other models as well as variations on these, but I wanted to mention this because my context is using the incentive model. So I don't have experience operating an actual grant program, so I can't speak to that. And also how your program is set up to pay people if you have funding available will impact of course your process around doing so. For us, it's set up so that faculty receive half of their total award amount up front at the time that they're awarded, and then they receive the second half when they've completed all program requirements. And I've seen that structure at other institutions as well. So some challenges that I've encountered and that might come up and you want to be prepared for as much as you can include some of the things here, faculty maybe not being fully informed or just not knowing either when they will get paid or who to direct their questions to.
So if the authors are unclear, if they don't understand the process, the timeline or what to expect, that's not great. So you want to avoid that. Payments get delayed, you think someone will receive their funds at a certain time and they don't. Sometimes that could be for known just like logistical timeline reasons or sometimes it could be for completely unknown reasons, and you want to figure out why did this happen. Maybe faculty think they will be able to do X thing with the funds, but then it turns out that they can't. And I think that relates back to understanding the process and all of the information. That may be also more likely to come up under the grant model, at least for us with our incentive program, there are not restrictions on what they can do with the funds, but that also may not be the case everywhere.
And also faculty leave the institution, now what? They can still get the rest of their funding. So I've had that happen a couple of times, both when someone had completed their project and then were leaving shortly after, or when maybe one collaborator leaves an institution mid project but another collaborator is still employed, so can we still pay the other person? And for me so far in these kinds of instances, it has still made sense to get that person the rest of the funds, and our finance team was able to figure out how to make that happen. But ideally these are scenarios that you would have a plan for rather than being surprised by them like I was, and then just hoping you can make it work. So those are some potential challenges that can come up at the end of a project, assuming that funds are being distributed at the end of a project.
And communication all around I think is how you can try to mitigate some of those challenges. So communicating the payment information and process to faculty or authors at multiple points, for example on your website with your program information so they can be informed going into it. If you give any informational presentations about your program when you're accepting applications, that can be a good time to explain the process to interested applicants. When you select a project and let them know they're being awarded, that's a great time to outline the whole process again when it comes to payments, and then when a project is wrapping up would be another point to remind them of the timeline and the process. So just constant communication. And I think I probably should have flipped these points on the slides, because to get to that point, you will need to do a lot of internal communication so that you understand the process. And not just you, but other people involved in it as well so that everyone understands the process, and then you can communicate the expectations to faculty.
I also think it's a good idea to revisit this after it's been established, especially whenever different people come on board or processes change, to make sure that everyone's still on the same page. And then I have a few thoughts I want to share on just how to ensure that the labor that goes into creating OER gets recognized through compensation, at least based on my experience with the incentive model. So one, find out who you're able to pay or not pay, an assumption could be that only full-time faculty can receive funds, but then you might find that actually a broader range of people who contribute to the OER can receive funds as well, such as maybe adjunct or graduate student instructors or even instructional designers. And that can open up the opportunity to have more folks involved who may not have thought they could be.
You can also encourage co-applicants or people applying as a group, again in the assumption that there's some program they're applying to, and that lets people know that collaboration is encouraged and they don't have to go it alone, and also provides a structure for funds to be given to more people as well. And with that possibility of group applications, we give groups the autonomy to decide how they want to divide the funds amongst themselves. You get this much funding total for your group, let us know how you want to divide it. Most end up splitting it evenly, but then we also have cases the group discusses and decide that certain individuals should receive more of the funds based on the amount of work that each person will be doing. Okay, moving on to our last topic under the umbrella of publication wrap-up assessment, or was it successful? How do you know? And I'm really glad we started with that opening reflection of what do you imagine success looks like with an OER publishing project, because I think a lot of those things will come back into play here as well.
Okay, so success can mean different things for different people and institutions, and how you think about success and assessing your OER publishing program or services will vary based on your goals. So I have some example goals included here. Not to say that anyone should be assessing all of these, but to show that goals can be focused more in some areas than others. And that I don't think success has to be measured by every single one of these. So just to get you thinking about your goals and what they could be, we have things here like reducing the cost of course materials and reaching audiences beyond your institution. And I also relate to wanting all of these to be your goals, but like I said, it doesn't have to be all of these. You can see how these are each a little bit different.
And so with an idea of what goals you're trying to achieve, you can think about how you'll know if you've met those goals. So some potential indicators of success could be estimated textbook costs that have been removed by using OER if one of your primary goals is reducing cost of course materials. So you can see how some of these relate more strongly to some of these example goals, and then how you'll know if you've met those goals. For example, students or faculties experience with a material or assessment of student learning. Some other potential indicators of success could be adoptions beyond your institution. Again, thinking if one of your goals is that broader reach of the material outside of your institution, or things like looking at published reviews of the material, accessibility of a content, or even author's experience through the process of developing it.
And then getting a little more specific from there, the assessment strategies you might use would be informed by your goals and those indicators of how you've met your goals. So these are some ideas of how you could gather that information to assess your experience, learning about the student experience or the faculty experience using the material or developing it. And some of those can be done through similar methods like surveys and focus groups. You might audit the completed OER for alignment with your goals. For example, its effectiveness with regard to course learning outcomes or student engagement, or the accessibility of the content. Or gathering that information about the reach and impact of the OER, like any usage data that you have access to where it's been adopted by others.
And lastly, I am a huge proponent of reflective practice, just regularly reflecting on and learning from your experiences. And that can be as simple as building in that time to reflect and ask questions like, what are we doing well? What could we be doing better? How can we improve on this a little bit for the next time?
So that was a really quick overview of the assessment piece, but I wanted to make sure we left some time for questions. But I also want to reiterate again that I've presented here a broad range of ideas for how you can assess a publication or your publishing services, but you don't have to...in your context and capacity. So that was everything I have for today. I included on the slides that resource with the quality checklist for creating OER and one conference presentation I referenced. But yeah, we have some time for questions, discussion, etc. Thank you.
Amanda: Thank you, Ariana. That was fantastic. You did have an immediate ask for could you share your metadata template?
Ariana: Yes. If you email me, yes, because that's not available online anywhere, but I will happily share a copy with anyone.
Amanda: All right, friends, do you have any questions for Ariana? I'm going to go back and look in the chat and see if I missed any, but feel free to take that time to either put them in the chat or you can come off of mute and ask directly.
"Thank you so much, I'm wondering how much of a change do you consider enough change for a new version?"
Ariana: That is a good question. Let me think. I'm imagining a faculty member has asked me this and how I would describe it to them. If there are relatively minor changes that could be throughout a work, I'm trying to think how would I describe the difference between minor changes, but anything that gets to the significant level. If you are maybe significantly editing or adding new chapters, removing chapters, adding a significant chunk of new content, anything that substantially changes the content, I think I would recommend a new version. Amanda, please feel free to add into this, but I also want to add that I think either way, adding in a record of what changes have been made would be helpful, even if it doesn't constitute a new edition, to add somewhere in the front or back matter, it was updated at this time and a description of the changes that were made. Amanda, I would be interested to hear your thoughts as well.
Amanda: Yeah, that's what I'm grabbing right now. I have a book that I work pretty closely with called Choosing & Using Sources, and I implemented when I arrived here at Ohio State, I implemented a version page inside of this book. And you'll see from that that I try to make my author batch their updates on an update cycle. So we update our book in preferably August and May, but sometimes January happens and then I just try to make a list of everything that happens. So we try to batch those updates, but if it's just typos, I don't consider that a new version. And you might consider it...if you wanted to keep track of that separately. But I wouldn't say if there was a chapter that had a typo that I'm going to go and make a new version update for that. And I think also you get to decide, are you doing full version updates?
So we're getting ready to publish another version update for this that'll be like, I think we're going to do either 4.5 or 5.0, but it's just the addition of audio to the book, and then there'll be another update in August. And depending on how we went with that decision this time, that'll either be the next 5.0 or it'll be 5.5 or whatever. Christine asks, "For the new version definition, I would also consider if other institutions are using the book, are we going to throw off their plan by changing some of their content?" And that's why our updates happen in May and August specifically, trying to hit that sweet spot before the semester starts and that the semester ends for the year. And it's really hard to get authors not to mess with things in between those times, but usually I'm like, "Hey." What about you, Ari?
Ariana: Yeah, that's a really good point. And I would say we actually haven't had that level of conversation about updates with our faculty authors. I think that's a good thing for us to start incorporating as well for those who have created material in the past couple of years and maybe updating it when we get in touch with them, mention to consider the timing of it, especially if others are using your material. I do see another question in the chat.
Amanda: Yeah, William asks, "How do you measure assessment success? So for instance, if a class is using a commercial textbook in the previous year, but is now using OER this year, is there a good way to measure the impact of the OER?"
Ariana: Yeah, and hopefully I'm understanding the question correctly. I think that relates back to is that something that is a primary goal of your OER program or publishing program? And if that is a strong motivator and something that you're striving for, is that affordability of course materials, then that would be something that you measure and then assess. So for example, at my institution, we did start with that focus, and so we have been tracking everyone that goes through our program. We've always had that. We collect the information and do the math and say, "Here's an estimate of textbook costs that were removed from these courses that are now using OER or free resources." So we have the information that we could then share the success of the program through that lens. I hope that makes sense, but let me know if I was missing part of the question there.
Amanda: And then a follow-up question on versioning, "Do you create a new bookshelf for the new version and preserve the old one, or just keep it in the platform? Or do you build upon the previous one?
Ariana: That's a good question. I think for, again, those minor changes like typos, little things here and there, I wouldn't create a new version. But for something that's more significant, where it's the same work but a new updated version of it that has more substantial changes, I'm leaning towards creating a new bookshelf. And there may be different cases where it makes sense to do different things, but especially other people may be adopting that first version and now there's that second version that they can use in their separate things, in separate spaces.
Amanda: And with Pressbooks, you have the option of cloning. So it does make that a little bit easier, but it also makes it hard. I decided to do all of the work in choosing your sources inside of the book. We tried doing a production copy and it broke our glossary when we tried to move it back to a live version in a different book. And so now I just have my author do all of her edits inside the same shell.
In spirit of time, thank you all for your questions. I put the survey form back in the chat. It is now open. I'm looking at it and have access to it, so I'm hoping that you will too. If not, Karen will be sending it out. And thank you so much, Ariana, for coming and sharing your expertise with us today.
Ariana: Yeah, thank you so much. I was so glad to be here. I wish I left more time for questions. Feel free to reach out to me if you want to chat about any of this more. Thank you.
END OF VIDEO
Chat Transcript
00:10:08 Caitlin Cooper: Hello!
00:10:18 Ariana Santiago: Hi everyone!
00:12:09 Ceit De Vitto: I didn't realize that this was a series!
00:13:11 Amanda Larson: Replying to "I didn't realize tha..." you can catch up on YouTube - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vda-Ue56xlFbY5mm6eRPURmI&si=qJLRoOah4qF32trI
00:13:24 Ceit De Vitto: Reacted to "you can catch up o..." with 👍
00:20:55 Christine Rickabaugh: Student savings and some yet-to-be-determined way to measure student impact and success, along with faculty relationships...
00:21:02 William Peaden: I would like to see buy in from academics who are not working with a 3 line whip but in the belief that OER is future to pedogogy
00:21:11 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "Student savings and ..." with 👍
00:21:13 Karen Lauritsen: Reacted to "Student savings and ..." with 👍
00:21:13 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "I would like to see ..." with 👍
00:21:16 Karen Lauritsen: Reacted to "I would like to see ..." with 👍
00:23:31 Christine Rickabaugh: Kate McNally Carter is AMAZING!
00:23:41 Amanda Larson: Reacted to "Kate McNally Carter ..." with 💯
00:24:09 Amanda Larson: because everyone wants to make brand new things
00:26:39 Karen Lauritsen: Coffee with the team to talk about how it went?
00:26:45 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "Coffee with the team..." with 🤩
00:26:47 Christine Rickabaugh: Gathering feedback, having creators reflect on the process,
00:26:48 Amanda Larson: finalizing licenses, copyright statements, book meta data
00:26:56 christine moynihan: offboarding plan
00:27:02 Micah Gjeltema: Sustainability/update plan, if applicable
00:27:05 Karen Lauritsen: Reacted to "offboarding plan" with 😀
00:27:11 Christine Rickabaugh: Reacted to "Sustainability/updat..." with 👍🏻
00:27:11 Jessica McClean: Developing a plan for marketing/raising awareness
00:27:11 Amanda Larson: advertising/sharing out the resource
00:33:17 Ariana Santiago: https://guides.lib.uh.edu/OER/adapt-create-oer
00:36:10 William Peaden: Reacted to "https://guides.lib.u..." with 👍
00:42:13 Amanda Larson: Correct!
00:42:51 Amanda Larson: There are several that try to be both
00:45:42 Amanda Larson: I have a spreadsheet that I use to make sure all the tasks that need to be done are complete
00:45:49 Carmen Cole: Reacted to "I have a spreadsheet..." with 👍🏻
00:45:55 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: We have an unlimited license to use Pressbooks at Texas A&M University.
00:45:56 William Peaden: Still at the very beginning of our OER program so at present no. But loads of amazing tools are available
00:45:59 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "I have a spreadsheet..." with 👍🏻
00:46:26 Christine Rickabaugh: I have a calendar alert for assigning ISBNs, DOI, and archive materials each year, instead of doing it all one at a time
00:46:33 Amanda Larson: And a standard accessibility remediation.
00:46:39 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "Still at the very be..." with 👍
00:46:40 Amanda Larson: Reacted to "I have a calendar al..." with 💯
00:46:49 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "I have a calendar al..." with 💯
00:46:55 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "And a standard acces..." with 👍
00:47:05 William Peaden: #MetadataMatters
00:47:12 Amanda Larson: Reacted to "#MetadataMatters" with 💯
00:47:24 Amanda Larson: I have the author also send it out on their discipline lists
00:48:05 Amanda Larson: OE Forum through SPARC
00:51:55 Emily Stenberg: Can you share the metadata form if possible?
00:52:08 William Peaden: Reacted to "Can you share the me..." with 👍
00:55:11 Christine Rickabaugh: I wrote a clause in our MOU that if the creators leave the institution, they leave us an openly-licensed draft of their project. :)
00:55:23 Amanda Larson: Reacted to "I wrote a clause in ..." with 🥰
00:55:26 Emily Stenberg: Reacted to "I wrote a clause in ..." with 👍
00:55:57 William Peaden: Reacted to "I wrote a clause in ..." with 👍
01:01:55 Joelle Thomas: Reacted to "I wrote a clause in ..." with 👍
01:02:59 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Thank you so much! I am wondering how much of a change do you consider enough change for a "new" version.
01:04:31 Amanda Larson: https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/choosingsources/back-matter/version-history/
01:04:40 Christine Rickabaugh: For the new version definition: I would also consider if other institutions are using the book- are we going to throw off their plan by changing some of the content?
01:06:00 William Peaden: How do you measure assessment success? So for instance if a class was using a commercial textbook in the previous year but is now using a OER this year is there a good way to measure the impact of the OER?
01:06:58 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: A follow-up question on versioning--do you create a new book shell for the new version (preserve the old one, or just keep it in the platform), or just build upon the previous one.
01:07:37 Amanda Larson: it depends on your platform, we use pressbooks, so we do it in the same book shell.
01:08:20 Amanda Larson: the survey form is now open - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1GZTm1YoccefNsRmM7NhZJK2YjvWh8osuXShPvukxObE/viewform?edit_requested=true
01:09:14 William Peaden: Thanks
01:09:16 Carmen Cole: Thank you!
01:09:18 Micah Gjeltema: Thanks so much!
00:10:18 Ariana Santiago: Hi everyone!
00:12:09 Ceit De Vitto: I didn't realize that this was a series!
00:13:11 Amanda Larson: Replying to "I didn't realize tha..." you can catch up on YouTube - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vda-Ue56xlFbY5mm6eRPURmI&si=qJLRoOah4qF32trI
00:13:24 Ceit De Vitto: Reacted to "you can catch up o..." with 👍
00:20:55 Christine Rickabaugh: Student savings and some yet-to-be-determined way to measure student impact and success, along with faculty relationships...
00:21:02 William Peaden: I would like to see buy in from academics who are not working with a 3 line whip but in the belief that OER is future to pedogogy
00:21:11 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "Student savings and ..." with 👍
00:21:13 Karen Lauritsen: Reacted to "Student savings and ..." with 👍
00:21:13 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "I would like to see ..." with 👍
00:21:16 Karen Lauritsen: Reacted to "I would like to see ..." with 👍
00:23:31 Christine Rickabaugh: Kate McNally Carter is AMAZING!
00:23:41 Amanda Larson: Reacted to "Kate McNally Carter ..." with 💯
00:24:09 Amanda Larson: because everyone wants to make brand new things
00:26:39 Karen Lauritsen: Coffee with the team to talk about how it went?
00:26:45 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "Coffee with the team..." with 🤩
00:26:47 Christine Rickabaugh: Gathering feedback, having creators reflect on the process,
00:26:48 Amanda Larson: finalizing licenses, copyright statements, book meta data
00:26:56 christine moynihan: offboarding plan
00:27:02 Micah Gjeltema: Sustainability/update plan, if applicable
00:27:05 Karen Lauritsen: Reacted to "offboarding plan" with 😀
00:27:11 Christine Rickabaugh: Reacted to "Sustainability/updat..." with 👍🏻
00:27:11 Jessica McClean: Developing a plan for marketing/raising awareness
00:27:11 Amanda Larson: advertising/sharing out the resource
00:33:17 Ariana Santiago: https://guides.lib.uh.edu/OER/adapt-create-oer
00:36:10 William Peaden: Reacted to "https://guides.lib.u..." with 👍
00:42:13 Amanda Larson: Correct!
00:42:51 Amanda Larson: There are several that try to be both
00:45:42 Amanda Larson: I have a spreadsheet that I use to make sure all the tasks that need to be done are complete
00:45:49 Carmen Cole: Reacted to "I have a spreadsheet..." with 👍🏻
00:45:55 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: We have an unlimited license to use Pressbooks at Texas A&M University.
00:45:56 William Peaden: Still at the very beginning of our OER program so at present no. But loads of amazing tools are available
00:45:59 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "I have a spreadsheet..." with 👍🏻
00:46:26 Christine Rickabaugh: I have a calendar alert for assigning ISBNs, DOI, and archive materials each year, instead of doing it all one at a time
00:46:33 Amanda Larson: And a standard accessibility remediation.
00:46:39 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "Still at the very be..." with 👍
00:46:40 Amanda Larson: Reacted to "I have a calendar al..." with 💯
00:46:49 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "I have a calendar al..." with 💯
00:46:55 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Reacted to "And a standard acces..." with 👍
00:47:05 William Peaden: #MetadataMatters
00:47:12 Amanda Larson: Reacted to "#MetadataMatters" with 💯
00:47:24 Amanda Larson: I have the author also send it out on their discipline lists
00:48:05 Amanda Larson: OE Forum through SPARC
00:51:55 Emily Stenberg: Can you share the metadata form if possible?
00:52:08 William Peaden: Reacted to "Can you share the me..." with 👍
00:55:11 Christine Rickabaugh: I wrote a clause in our MOU that if the creators leave the institution, they leave us an openly-licensed draft of their project. :)
00:55:23 Amanda Larson: Reacted to "I wrote a clause in ..." with 🥰
00:55:26 Emily Stenberg: Reacted to "I wrote a clause in ..." with 👍
00:55:57 William Peaden: Reacted to "I wrote a clause in ..." with 👍
01:01:55 Joelle Thomas: Reacted to "I wrote a clause in ..." with 👍
01:02:59 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: Thank you so much! I am wondering how much of a change do you consider enough change for a "new" version.
01:04:31 Amanda Larson: https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/choosingsources/back-matter/version-history/
01:04:40 Christine Rickabaugh: For the new version definition: I would also consider if other institutions are using the book- are we going to throw off their plan by changing some of the content?
01:06:00 William Peaden: How do you measure assessment success? So for instance if a class was using a commercial textbook in the previous year but is now using a OER this year is there a good way to measure the impact of the OER?
01:06:58 Seyed Abdollah Shahrokni: A follow-up question on versioning--do you create a new book shell for the new version (preserve the old one, or just keep it in the platform), or just build upon the previous one.
01:07:37 Amanda Larson: it depends on your platform, we use pressbooks, so we do it in the same book shell.
01:08:20 Amanda Larson: the survey form is now open - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1GZTm1YoccefNsRmM7NhZJK2YjvWh8osuXShPvukxObE/viewform?edit_requested=true
01:09:14 William Peaden: Thanks
01:09:16 Carmen Cole: Thank you!
01:09:18 Micah Gjeltema: Thanks so much!
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