A Busy Productive Spring for the Open Textbook Project

Of Meetings, Partnerships and Workshops

Phase 1 of the Open Textbook Review is underway. Find out what’s next on the horizon for the BCcampus Open Textbook project team:
APRIL

For two days in early April, BCcampus hosted the Open Textbook Summit at the SFU Wosk Centre for Dialogue in Vancouver.
The summit brought together representatives from around the globe including OpenStax/Connexions and the 20 Million Minds Foundation. Summit participants list can be found here.
As a result of the summit, BCcampus is now actively working with Connexions on a federated repository model.
In addition, BCcampus is now working with the University of Minnesota to share texts and associated reviews.

MAY

The BC Open Textbook project team continues to wave the Open Textbook flag with presentations and facilitated adoption workshops to post-secondary institutions including: University of British Columbia, Douglas and Camosun Colleges, and Royal Roads University.
Team and subcommittee members also attended a number of Articulation Committee meetings to generate enthusiasm and support for the project. Committee meetings attended included: Physics, Health, Biology, Chemistry, Economics, Sociology, Anthropology, Mathematics, Statistics and Communications.
This outreach raised the profile of the project significantly and will ultimately lead to more adoption of open textbooks.

JUNE

In early June, Mary Burgess and Clint Lalonde presented to the Educational Technology User Group Workshop at SFU.
Over the summer the team will be working on developing an online, asynchronous Open Textbook Adoption Workshop so everyone in the province has a chance to take part.

WHAT’S THE STATUS OF THE OPEN TEXTBOOK REVIEW?
PHASE ONE COMPLETE

10 new open texts were posted on the BCcampus website.
60 applications were received to review an open textbook.
17 public and three private institutions are represented.
Reviews are due by September 3 and will be posted on our site with their associated textbooks.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR PHASE TWO?

Begins in September with a Call for Adaptations of existing open materials.
The BC Open Textbook project team is continuing to work on the technology that will be used to support those reviewing, adapting and creating texts. The team remains committed to ensuring adapters and creators have some choice in the tools they use, and that content can be provided in a variety of high quality formats and file types.

Watch this space for more updates in the coming months.
To learn and explore more:

photo credit: Sylvia Currie