OERu/OERu 13.10 Meeting/Open textbook proposal for action

Name of proposal
Levering Open Access Textbooks for building the OERu programme of study

Aims of the activity (longer term)

 * Identify pool of open access source materials that can be used in OERu courses towards the Bachelor of General Studies program – no starting from scratch
 * Make these materials available and known to partners to reuse in their course development activities for OERu courses, but let it be known to other faculty/designers that these materials can be also adopted for general courses within the universities

Objectives of the activity (short term)

 * Identify well-designed courses using open access materials and adopt/use these courses as a model for future development
 * Quickly repackage/remix existing courses, where necessary, substituting proprietary materials with openly accessible materials
 * When selecting courses to build with open textbooks, identify/group courses that can “easily” fit into the selected program of study i.e. Bachelor of General Studies
 * Identify barriers to using open textbooks in classes – address them

Narrative description of what you will do
Find x number of very well designed courses already in use, and tweak/revise them to use only open access materials/textbook that can be used in OERu course(s). Select the suite of courses according to the their suitability within the chosen programme of study i.e. Bachelor of General Studies, thus building towards a complete programme.

What inputs are required?

 * Identify existing resources and collect them in a way that makes them user-searchable
 * Involve librarians and their pool of knowledge in the process
 * Identify champion faculty/instructional designers who are willing to revise and actually use these textbooks in the courses they teach

Group decisions for this activity including who and when

 * the OERu institutions make decisions for the textbooks that will be used in courses for the credential that they will be awarding