Creating open educational resources (OER)

Creating open textbooks

Free course

The Open Education Network Publishing Curriculum is open to everyone in the Canvas learning management system.

Useful guides

Several resources are available to help open textbook authors:

  • The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (So Far), from the Rebus Community, offers comprehensive resources for creating an open textbook.
  • Authoring Open Textbooks, from the Open Education Network, features a checklist for getting started, case studies of publishing programs, textbook organization and elements, writing resources, and an overview of useful tools.
  • Open Education Self-Publishing Guide, from BCcampus, provides details on the preparation, planning, writing, publication, and maintenance of an open textbook. Copyright, open-copyright licenses, and the differences between citation and attribution are discussed, as well as the importance of copy editing and proofreading. Checklists and templates also are provided.
  • Open Textbook Toolkit, from several universities in Canada, is for faculty who want to create their first open textbook. Sections cover stakeholders, technology, copyright, accessibility, production, and classroom use.
  • Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students, from the Open Education Network, is a handbook for faculty interested in practicing open pedagogy by involving students in the making of open textbooks, ancillary materials, or other OER.

  • BCcampus Open Education Accessibility Toolkit provides resources for content creators, instructional designers, educational technologists, librarians, and others to create a truly open textbook that's free and accessible for all students.

Tools

Contact Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey if you're interested in creating and publishing OER.

PressbooksEDU
Digital Learning & the UA Libraries implemented PressbooksEDU in 2020. This web-based software lets you collaboratively create ebooks and publish them in a variety of formats: PDF, EPUB, and others. It includes H5P integration for creating interactive activities. The Pressbooks User Guide and Pressbooks video tutorials offer help.

Manifold
The UA Libraries host the publishing platform Manifold, which is being used to produce open access books for the UA Press's Open Arizona project.

Open Author
This tool from OER Commons helps you build and publish OER. It requires the creation of a free account.

Editing open textbooks

Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know
This guide from the Open Education Network focuses on the technological aspects of editing existing open textbooks, and will help you assess the effort, expertise, and technical tools needed. It also includes step-by-step instructions for importing and editing common open textbook file and platform types.

Adobe Creative Cloud products
UA employees and students have free access to the complete suite of Adobe Creative Cloud products, which include Acrobat Pro DC for editing PDFs and Dreamweaver CC for editing HTML.

A la carte publishing services from Scribe

As members of the Open Textbook Network, the University of Arizona can contract with Scribe to buy the following publishing services:

  • copyediting
  • proofreading
  • indexing
  • typesetting
  • page and cover design
  • ancillary development
  • multilingual editing
  • prepress services for print and electronic formats

Contact Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey for additional information.

Adding Creative Commons logos and labeling works

Download high-quality logos from Creative Commons. Make sure to label your work to enable attribution. Here's sample wording: "OER Toolkit" by Cheryl Cuillier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. It's very important to include the link to the deed of the Creative Commons license used. If you need help with this, contact Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey.