Although as educators we may find an open textbook or open educational resources that we can use without adapting it, this is often not the case.
For this activity, you will identify a textbook or a resource that you could adopt for your course as a replacement for a current publisher resource and you will determine how you would need to adapt it for your context.
To find an open resource, navigate to one of the open textbook or open resource repositories listed on this page.
Search the repository for a text or a resource that you could use in a course you teach or support that would displace a current paid resources.
Explore how you would need to adapt this resource in order to use it in your context. To do this consider the examples of OER Adaption.
- Diversity, Accessibility & Inclusive Design
- Translation
- Updating
- Learning Design
You may want to consider other criteria such as contextualization or localization as well.
Complete this Activity
After you do this assignment, please share it with the comment below so it can appear with other responses. Share what OER you selected and what adaptations would be required. If your response exists at a publicly viewable URL, you can add the information in the box below.
Image Credit: Image used on featured image: Typo... by Jim Orsini (CC by NC 2.0)
For the last couple of years I have been using some of the materials which are parts in a EdX MOOC course (AP Italian Language and Culture) in three of my UBC Italian courses. In particular, I have been shown a number of short video-interviews which have been made available through You Tube. To adapt these videos for my own courses I had to develop a glossary, as well as comprehension questions, and other kinds of assignments such as questions to be used for discussions and/or for writing exercises.
I am also currently using Italian literature in Public Domain – i.e. either entire books or excerpts – in my intermediate language courses and had to develop resources similar to the ones which I have mentioned above,
While it’s not *my* course, I have taken a course in the past that was an introductory to ancient Mediterranean cultures. I loved the course but unfortunately the required textbook for this course was very expensive. So, I think this open educational resource can be adapted for this context: “World History: Cultures, States, and Societies to 1500” found from the BC Campus Open Textbook Collection.
It would need to be significantly reduced (487 pages is way too long for a first year text) and the context would need to be narrowed. The pre-history section would need to be removed, as well as the cultures that are not considered Mediterranean.
For reading ease I would add more variety in the text, as it stands right now it is a lot of flat text. Maybe color for certain themes or more spacing. It would help to add more open sourced images, as well.
This is such a cool resource – it can be adapted in so many useful ways!
Over the past few summers I have been trying to re-teach myself French through textbooks borrowed from the library. I also considered enrolling in an online course for French language skills but never got around to it, mainly due to the cost and time commitment. I came across a college level French textbook, “Liberté”, that I could easily integrate into my own self-learning. I would likely take the supplementary content that is provided with the work for my own learning and testing, and locate the relevant sections in the work to support the completion of these materials. I would also want to provide more English translations to some of the questions to assist with my comprehension of the learning activities.
I also noticed that the textbook includes a notice that it meets the accessibility criteria. The textbook has a C BY-NC-SA 4.0 license applied, which means that I must give attribution, share under the same license if I adapt or remix content, and not share the textbook commercially.
I found a fantastic text using the BCCampus Open Textbook Collection, found here: https://opentextbc.ca/mediastudies101/
As a PhD student, I have not taught my own course yet but I have TA’d a course called Critical Media Studies twice now, and this OER covers a lot of the same topics from that class. I noticed, however, that it doesn’t provide a lot of historical context or primary text excerpts like the original textbook did. So, I believe it would have to be supplemented with some primary source material. Additionally, the discussion questions are about the Australian/New Zealand geographic context, so I would have to revise discussion questions to be more about the Canadian context (or the context of a country of the student’s choosing). This being said, I believe this is.a great OER and I will be bookmarking it for future use.
I have not yet had the opportunity to teach this text, but I’ve used it in developing some syllabi for job applications and such:
http://perspectives.americananthro.org
The resource is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial so I’ll be able to adapt it for course purposes. In using it in this limited and theoretical context, I’ve definitely pulled it apart to rearrange chapters. Thinking about using it in Canadian context as well, I think that there would be some work needed in tailoring some of the examples. I think that I would also maybe add some to sections where I have particular interest in developing activities or have some other expertise/interest to add to the course.
I have found a number of OER textbooks on the BC Campus website but the one I have been using in a course and introduce to others is “Teaching in a Digital Age” by Tony Bates. https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/. We wanted to introduce this textbook in a graduate program for teachers in Japan, and actually adapted the book to create a Japanese version. Here is the link to our Japanese version under CC license. https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagejpn/
Through the BC Campus Open Textbook Collection I found “Writing for Success” by Tara Horkoff which I could use when I teach first year composition: https://opentextbc.ca/writingforsuccessh5p/
While the book includes some example essays, I would supplement it by adding in peer-reviewed essays for my students to read and write on. While the book includes more information that I actually teach, I would not remove any of the extraneous information as it might still be beneficial for my students–just because I would not cover it in class, it does not mean that it would not benfiet them to have it. it might be useful in other classes or to improve their writing skills more generally.
I would also have to include information on MLA citation.
I found this OER textbook for Persian from the https://www.laits.utexas.edu/persian_teaching_resources/
It is a 2 level textbook with lots and lots of audio and visual material. I have to do two forms of adaptation though to be able to make it functional for my purposes both of which is with respect to my students.
I studied the texts and audios very deeply and they do not always represent the interests of my students. SO I need to pick and choose and act eclectically with respect to which texts I am using not to exclude and alienate some of my students
The material are too difficult for the average Proficiency of UBC students, So I need to make a lot of H5P exercises and scaffolding exercises to accompany the books
Altogether though it provides a wonderful framework for my teaching where I can design and systematically put things together.
I love this activity because I have been doing HALF of it for the past few years – that half being using an open textbook option. However, I haven’t gotten as far as doing any real adapting. I have considered it a bit. One of the texts available on BCCampus is an open stax chemistry book. It is a great open resource for basic chemistry content, and I’ve used it in various courses. It really could replace any first year chemistry textbook. However, I would adapt some things if I could. For example, I think the actual design of the book is very similar to the traditional textbooks, and so the activities, problem sets, questions that are posed to readers are also typically traditional. As I think more about open pedagogy, I also think about the variety of types of assignments and assessments I use in my course and it would be great if that type of course design was also present in the textbook.
All in all though, the open texts I have used are great and allow access that is otherwise not possible for all students.
I would adapt https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/dcbiol110311092nded/ because they have done a really good job. To adapt this, though I would want to add:
More illustrations, figures, interactive student study resources, more content details, as well as a more Diversity, Accessibility & Inclusive Design that additionally includes Universal Learning Design for increased accessibility for students with different learning needs.
I went through the open textbook resources linked here and was intrigued by this open access textbook: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/moving-pictures-an-introduction-to-cinema I’m frequently employed as a teaching assistant for introduction to film courses, and the commonly used textbooks are particularly exorbitantly priced due to the large number of images. This textbook appears to cover all of the key material from those books without the high price tag, and has the advantage of being offered in multiple formats depending on user preference (one can download a PDF, or read the more interactive online version that includes embedded videos to support key points).
Some downsides of the textbook that leave room for adaptation is the over-emphasis on American filmmaking for most of the examples, and the sparsity of the “Representation in Cinema” section, which covers only women and African-Americans. If I were to use this textbook in a course, I would either make edits to the textbook itself, or create supplemental materials to correct these oversights; for example, highlighting Asian-American representation, and discussing the many contributions of filmmaking centres outside of America (including our own home, Canada!).
This is “Introduction to Cultural Analytics” by Melanie Walsh, which is designed for those who are totally new to text mining and programming: (https://melaniewalsh.github.io/Intro-Cultural-Analytics/welcome.html). I was introduced to this open text during a Digital Mining workshop for EALAC scholars. As someone with no prior experience in programming languages, I found it quite challenging to understand what was going on during each exercise. To make it more user-friendly for humanities students like me, I would incorporate accessible language, including plenty of scaffolding exercises that cater to individuals without programming knowledge or backgrounds, and providing real-life examples that illustrate the practical applications of these techniques in the humanities field.