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The Open Textbook Library (OTL) turns 10 in 2022! To celebrate the library’s role in bringing together a community committed to making higher education more equitable, we are featuring authors, faculty, librarians, students and others who have contributed to the Open Textbook Library through the years. This interview was conducted by Michael Whitchurch, OER & Media Literacy Librarian at Brigham Young University.
Christina Hendricks is Professor of Teaching in Philosophy, and Academic Director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology at the University of British Columbia Vancouver. She is the editor of the Introduction to Philosophy series (CC BY). Her focus is on teaching and learning relating to undergraduate students, with an interest in “the quality and efficacy of open textbooks.” She maintains a blog on teaching philosophy called You’re the Teacher.
Christina Hendricks is Professor of Teaching in Philosophy, and Academic Director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology at the University of British Columbia Vancouver. She is the editor of the Introduction to Philosophy series (CC BY). Her focus is on teaching and learning relating to undergraduate students, with an interest in “the quality and efficacy of open textbooks.” She maintains a blog on teaching philosophy called You’re the Teacher.Christina, we look forward to this conversation and getting to know you a little better. First off, here are some fun questions:
What would you say is the most used app on your phone?
Tweetbot (except for a Twitter hiatus I took recently for part of 2021).
Have you ever asked someone for their autograph? If so, who, when and where?
Melissa Gilbert, when I was about 8 years old and we saw her at an ice rink in Sun Valley, Idaho.
What is the favorite thing you learned in school?
Favourite class in high school was advanced biology. Many favourites in college, including feminist theory, Buddhism, ethics, and political philosophy.
Now, moving to the more academic purpose of this interview, can you describe the impact the Open Textbook Library has had on your teaching career?
The Open Textbook Library is a fantastic collection of OER that I have used to keep up on what other OER are available for philosophy courses. The reviews provide very helpful and comprehensive information about the books to help one decide which books to investigate in more detail. I have been very excited to see the collection of philosophy OER grow over the years. It is a very useful place to go each year when planning courses to see if there are new resources that might fit the topics I am teaching that year. I have already committed to zero textbook costs for my introduction to philosophy courses, by relying on open or other free resources on the web and library-purchased resources. Sometimes it is difficult to find articles or books on topics for my courses in these categories, and the OTL is one very useful place to keep checking each year for new resources.
You not only use the OTL for keeping up on open textbooks in philosophy, but also have several books of your own in the collection. What inspired you to write an open textbook series about philosophy?
I started working in open education around 2013, and noticed that there were very few OER for philosophy courses. A few years later I connected with Hugh McGuire, founder of Pressbooks, at the 2016 Open Education Conference, as he was talking about a new project, the Rebus Foundation. We discussed my desire to create an open textbook for introduction to philosophy courses, and how I didn’t have the time or expertise to write all chapters for such a textbook myself. I wanted to coordinate a group of authors to contribute chapters to the book. This was a good fit with the Rebus Community that was getting started around the same time: a community of people working together on OER, supported by staff members from the Rebus Foundation who would create and sustain a community platform, produce resources, and generally help people to connect, collaborate and share information, expertise, and advice.
The Introduction to Philosophy open textbook was one of the early projects with the Rebus Community, and we worked together with Rebus support staff to create workflows, guides, and other documentation that would work for our project and could be adapted for other projects if desired.
We started by planning a single textbook with several parts, each with their own editor who would select chapter authors for their parts. As we went along, however, the part editors were highly engaged in creating excellent chapter outlines and recruiting authors to write many effective chapters. It soon became clear that keeping this to one textbook would not be as effective as creating a series of separate textbooks on different topics often included in Introduction to Philosophy courses. One textbook turned into nine! The books in the series are on the following topics: Aesthetic Theory and Practice, Epistemology, Ethics, Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Science, and Social and Political Philosophy.
As a result of the project growing significantly it has also stretched out in time; it takes quite some time to work with nine different book editors to find and 5-10 or more chapter authors per book, have the chapters written and edited, recruit peer reviewers and organize reviews, do copy editing and accessibility checks, create cover artwork and design, and format the books in Pressbooks. To produce nine books takes quite a long time. Each book can take a few years to produce, from idea to publication. It was especially challenging to keep momentum going with many of us experiencing significantly increased workloads during the pandemic, starting in 2020.
We published two books each in 2019, 2020, and 2021. You can see which books we have published so far, and which are outstanding, on the series project page at the Rebus Community.
The Introduction to Philosophy open textbook was one of the early projects with the Rebus Community, and we worked together with Rebus support staff to create workflows, guides, and other documentation that would work for our project and could be adapted for other projects if desired.
We started by planning a single textbook with several parts, each with their own editor who would select chapter authors for their parts. As we went along, however, the part editors were highly engaged in creating excellent chapter outlines and recruiting authors to write many effective chapters. It soon became clear that keeping this to one textbook would not be as effective as creating a series of separate textbooks on different topics often included in Introduction to Philosophy courses. One textbook turned into nine! The books in the series are on the following topics: Aesthetic Theory and Practice, Epistemology, Ethics, Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Science, and Social and Political Philosophy.
As a result of the project growing significantly it has also stretched out in time; it takes quite some time to work with nine different book editors to find and 5-10 or more chapter authors per book, have the chapters written and edited, recruit peer reviewers and organize reviews, do copy editing and accessibility checks, create cover artwork and design, and format the books in Pressbooks. To produce nine books takes quite a long time. Each book can take a few years to produce, from idea to publication. It was especially challenging to keep momentum going with many of us experiencing significantly increased workloads during the pandemic, starting in 2020.
We published two books each in 2019, 2020, and 2021. You can see which books we have published so far, and which are outstanding, on the series project page at the Rebus Community.
Please describe the experience of coordinating content for an open textbook series.
We knew when we started that coordinating nine separate books was a very big project. I really didn’t know how big it would turn out to be until we started working on it. I knew very little about creating an open textbook when we started, and the folks at the Rebus Community were invaluable: they helped me think through all of the various steps in the process, and worked with me to develop author guides, review guides, workflow documents, author and reviewer recruitment processes, video demonstrations for Pressbooks, and more. I cannot thank Apurva Ashok and Zoe Wake Hyde at the Rebus Community enough for their help and guidance throughout this project. And the Rebus Community platform has been very valuable for connecting people to the project, and for asking for ideas and advice when I have questions or run into problems.
Finding editors for the books as well as chapter authors has been sometimes fairly straightforward, sometimes a bit challenging. We found a few book editors and authors right away, and I have been very happy to see so many people who are interested in contributing to this series. As the books have taken longer than originally planned, some people’s work and priorities have changed, and we have had to replace some book editors and rework the books that had already been started. The Rebus Community helps with getting the word out about the series, providing advice at all stages of the project, helping to address technical glitches (often working with the Pressbooks team), and generally helping me when I fall behind on communications to editors and authors (thank you!).
We are very lucky to have a very talented artist as one of the book editors: Heather Salazar, who edited the Philosophy of Mind book. She created the cover art for that book and then agreed to create artworks for all of the other books in the series. And Jonathan Lashley created our cover design that is consistent across the series, and puts covers together for each book as well. The artworks and design really bring the series together as a whole.
Since almost everyone working on this project is a volunteer, this work often happens on top of full-time jobs, and timelines can vary quite a bit for what folks are able to do and when. This includes me as series editor! My work on this project is pretty much only in the evenings and on weekends. But I really enjoy working with everyone to produce high quality open textbooks for introductory philosophy courses that will hopefully be adopted in classes more and more.
And though my main focus is to finish the remaining books in the series, I am also thinking, when that is done and I have more time, about working with the book editors to see if any revisions might be useful, and to try to coordinate some new editions. We may consider starting one or two new books for the series as well. But all of that is further into the future than I can get my head around right now!
_____
Thank you, Christina, for sharing your thoughts with us! And thank you for writing, editing and sharing an openly licensed philosophy textbook series in the Open Textbook Library.
Finding editors for the books as well as chapter authors has been sometimes fairly straightforward, sometimes a bit challenging. We found a few book editors and authors right away, and I have been very happy to see so many people who are interested in contributing to this series. As the books have taken longer than originally planned, some people’s work and priorities have changed, and we have had to replace some book editors and rework the books that had already been started. The Rebus Community helps with getting the word out about the series, providing advice at all stages of the project, helping to address technical glitches (often working with the Pressbooks team), and generally helping me when I fall behind on communications to editors and authors (thank you!).
We are very lucky to have a very talented artist as one of the book editors: Heather Salazar, who edited the Philosophy of Mind book. She created the cover art for that book and then agreed to create artworks for all of the other books in the series. And Jonathan Lashley created our cover design that is consistent across the series, and puts covers together for each book as well. The artworks and design really bring the series together as a whole.
Since almost everyone working on this project is a volunteer, this work often happens on top of full-time jobs, and timelines can vary quite a bit for what folks are able to do and when. This includes me as series editor! My work on this project is pretty much only in the evenings and on weekends. But I really enjoy working with everyone to produce high quality open textbooks for introductory philosophy courses that will hopefully be adopted in classes more and more.
And though my main focus is to finish the remaining books in the series, I am also thinking, when that is done and I have more time, about working with the book editors to see if any revisions might be useful, and to try to coordinate some new editions. We may consider starting one or two new books for the series as well. But all of that is further into the future than I can get my head around right now!
_____
Thank you, Christina, for sharing your thoughts with us! And thank you for writing, editing and sharing an openly licensed philosophy textbook series in the Open Textbook Library.
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