OSW2021: Let’s make some OER with Pressbooks: A hands-on session
From Hardy Schwamm
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The NUI Galway Library provides a new OER authoring and publishing platform, NUI Galway Open Press using Pressbooks. The OER project is funded the NUI Galway Student Project Fund. NUI Galway Open Press enables the production of web books and similar content, which can be published under an open license. It allows the easy production or customisation of open texts and a range of open materials.
This hands-on session tailored for NUI Galway Open Scholarship looked at several practical elements of creating and publishing OER using NUI Galway Open Press.
1. Remix or create using Pressbooks (Kris Meen)This session allowed participants to go through two distinct processes of using Pressbooks. First, we went through how to discover, and then clone an open textbook, and finally modify the text so suit one’s own local / pedagogical purposes. Second, participants learned how to create from scratch an open textbook, i.e. how to upload and build upon existing pedagogical materials that an instructor may be using already (converting from Word format will be the key example). The application of open licensing featured as an element of both exercises. Participants not only gained experience with Pressbooks as a powerful software, but a more fine-grained understanding of the practice of utilising OER in teaching and learning. Potential Pressbooks users but also anyone with a curiosity about open publishing tools and the use and creation of open texts and open educational resources more generally benefits from this session.
2. Sustainable OER for teaching (Eileen Kennedy)This session walks through a fully functional OER which is currently in use in teaching in NUI Galway. We will demonstrate how to add original and remixed resources to it, invite students to collaborate in co-creating content, and expand upon it year on year for sustainable teaching. The session will also look at OER in use in other institutions and explain what makes Pressbooks a suitable platform for hosting OER and its advantages as a teaching resource.
3. Reusing OER in a global and local context (Cillian Joy)This session demonstrations how to use and publish your OER globally and locally. Global reach and promotion are considered by using the Pressbooks Directory. We will look at how to export and publish your OER to the common ebook reading platforms and apps. For example, reader-ready PDFs required by print and print-on-demand distribution services, and the EPUB or MOBI files necessary to distribute with ebook stores like Kindle, Nook, and more.
Local reuse is demonstrated by showing how to include your public or private OER content in the NUI Galway Learning Management System, Blackboard. In addition, we will look at how to add content to your OER that is hosted outside of the NUI Galway OER platform from global and local multimedia hosting platforms. Finally, we will show how your readers can watch videos, take quizzes, view interactive maps, and more without ever leaving the book.
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