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The Open Education Network (OEN) is pleased to share the Guide to Open Textbook Essential and Exemplary Features, a new, openly licensed resource available on OEN’s Manifold. The Guide is designed to help authors, librarians, instructional designers and faculty select and develop open textbooks.
Guide to Open Textbook Essential and Exemplary
Features by Stefanie Buck is licensed CC BY 4.0.
Stefanie led the resource’s development and worked with contributors from Oregon State University, the OEN publishing community and participants at a Library Publishing Forum session. She invited input and feedback from those same communities at multiple project points.
It describes specific “essential” and “exemplary” features in each of the 10 categories. Stefanie explained that this concept was borrowed from QM because it allows faculty authors to know what the expected baseline is, but provides some flexibility in additional functionality. It also allows for customization at the program level, depending on the resources available there.
The textbook rises to an exemplary level when it includes all of the first-mentioned characteristics, and in addition:
The Open Education Network (OEN) is pleased to share the Guide to Open Textbook Essential and Exemplary Features, a new, openly licensed resource available on OEN’s Manifold. The Guide is designed to help authors, librarians, instructional designers and faculty select and develop open textbooks.
Guide to Open Textbook Essential and Exemplary
Features by Stefanie Buck is licensed CC BY 4.0.
Collaborative Leadership
Stefanie Buck, director of Open Educational Resources at Oregon State University and co-chair of the OEN Publishing Cooperative Advisory Group, was inspired to create the guide based on her institution’s commitment to Quality Matters (QM), “a continuous improvement model for assuring the quality of online and hybrid courses through a collegial faculty review process.”
“Many faculty who want to create OER textbooks don’t have much experience in writing textbooks, which is very different from writing a monograph or scholarly journal article,” said Stefanie. “This guide was created, in part, to help them understand what components a quality OER textbook should have, and also to help those of us who work with OER authors to set expectations, so that the outcome is the best work we can publish.”
Stefanie led the resource’s development and worked with contributors from Oregon State University, the OEN publishing community and participants at a Library Publishing Forum session. She invited input and feedback from those same communities at multiple project points.
“Stefanie began this project for Oregon State University and immediately identified its potential for the larger open education community,” said Karen Lauritsen, Open Education Network’s senior director, publishing. “She invited people into the creation process and was always open to feedback. It was clear that her primary goal was to make something useful for people who are involved in writing and publishing open textbooks.”
Stefanie is grateful for the input she gained throughout the process.“It was important to get feedback from the OER community in creating this guide, so I really appreciate all the people who participated, commented, and made suggestions,” she said. “It makes for a much stronger document."
Measuring Quality
The Guide’s goal is to offer a method for evaluating open textbooks. It’s an attempt at defining a slippery and often subjective claim: quality.
The Guide is organized into 10 specific areas for authors to consider when creating an open textbook. It asserts that a quality open textbook is:
- Accessible
- Accurate
- Clear and consistent
- Comprehensive
- Culturally relevant
- Discoverable
- Learner-centered
- Modular and adaptable
- Structured
- Transparent
It describes specific “essential” and “exemplary” features in each of the 10 categories. Stefanie explained that this concept was borrowed from QM because it allows faculty authors to know what the expected baseline is, but provides some flexibility in additional functionality. It also allows for customization at the program level, depending on the resources available there.
“For example,” she said, “an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) or Digital Object Identifier (DOI) has a cost associated with it, so it may not be feasible for all OER programs to require it. But where it is required, the program coordinator could make it an ‘essential’ feature rather than an ‘exemplary' feature.”
Essential or Exemplary
For instance, a reader might like to understand ways to make an open textbook discoverable. According to the Guide, a discoverable book may be recognized by these essential characteristics:
- Includes accurate and complete metadata, including license, author(s) and copyright holder(s), date of publication, publisher, descriptive keywords and subject headings for better findability.
- Provides a method for submitting corrections (errata) that is regularly monitored.
- Is made available in a variety of repositories and referatories whenever possible.
The textbook rises to an exemplary level when it includes all of the first-mentioned characteristics, and in addition:
- Includes an ISBN or DOI.
- Provides current, accurate and openly available usage and/or adoption data.
- Lists the repositories and referatories where the textbook is included.
Adaptable
The Guide is licensed CC BY 4.0 International, which means that with attribution, it may be shared and modified to reflect different institutional priorities. Like other publishing documentation and templates, it will be maintained by the Open Education Network community.
“I imagine OER publishing programs adapting this Guide to serve as a framework for their grant programs,” said Karen. “It can be a concrete starting point for conversations with authors about what their finished open textbook will include, and be a critical tool for establishing a shared understanding between everyone involved.”
Guide to Open Textbook Essential and Exemplary Features is available in Manifold, and as an editable Google Doc. If you adopt or adapt the guide, we’d love to hear from you. Email open@umn.edu and let us know.