Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Affordable Learning Georgia's Reimagining the Textbook 2/19/2016 - Macon, GA

Tammy Powell, Jonathan Arnett, and I attended Affordable Learning Georgia's one-day conference on Reimagining the Textbook in Macon on February 19. We learned all kinds of cool stuff about open educational resources and affordable learning materials at the conference, but here are some highlights!

On OERs

The four ideal R's of OERs:

  • reuse - OERs should be free to reuse
  • revise - you should be able to revise OERs within the licensing parameters 
  • remix - you should be able to mix OERs with other resources within licensing parameters
  • redistribute - you should be able to redistribute OERs to your students and others
Challenges of OERs:
  • technical
    • internet
    • accessibility
  • economic
    • development costs
    • maintenance costs
  • legal - copyright 
  • social
    • lack of technical skills
    • quality
OER landscape:
  • open textbooks
    • Flat World Knowledge
    • Open College Textbooks
    • OpenStax College
  • OER Commons
    • repository for OERs
    • search for discipline
    • collaborative atmosphere
  • Open Courseware Consortium
    • another repository
    • focused around general ed
  • Galileo
    • research repository
    • free access for members

On Affordable Learning Materials (ALMs)

  • not free, but affordable
  • eBook platforms
  • publisher materials
Challenges of ALMs:
  • limitations - have to use specific textbook to get pub materials
  • sometimes not downloadable
ALM landscape - eReader apps:
  • YUZU - Barnes & Noble (replaced Nook)
  • Brightwave - Follett
  • Smartbook - McGraw Hill

Evaluating OERs and ALMs

  • Does it match the learner's needs?
  • Does it align with curriculum standards?
  • How is the ease of use/accessibility?
  • Are there license restrictions?
  • How is the content quality?
  • Is there a community of users?

Ohio State University's BookLaunch

  • cohort model - 2 cohorts annually with 2-8 projects each
  • focused on iBooks, but support other formats (ePub, PDF)
Basics
  • Bootcamps
  • Lynda.com
  • 80 hours of support
  • Macbook Airs
  • $500/$1000 with 2:1 match (half from BookLaunch, half from department)
  • co-produce project plan

A Cool Tool

Ohio State uses a cool tool called Bookry.com to create and incorporate interactive widgets into their iBooks. 

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