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Week 2: Question #2 Now that you've had some time to explore the open textbooks repositories and read some peer reviews ...
Go back to: General discussion
Please tell us what you consider the most important criteria for instructors as they make open textbook adoptions. Are there others beside the 11 factors used by COT peer reviews that are more critical? Do you think the criteria are discipline-specific? Continue to brainstorm with others.
Sorry for posting this questions late to the forums and thanks to everyone who commented in the Week 2 Course Materials.
When I do face-to-face workshops with faculty on Adopting Open Textbooks, Quality of the content is their #1 concern and as Susan Ampers mentioned earlier, peer-reviews really help to address that concern.
Another concern that I hear about is lack of ancillaries including test banks and study guides that may be available with commercial text books. Flat World Knowledge, an open source textbook publisher, is exploring a new business model where they openly license their textbooks and offer the study guides for sale to students.
http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/
For me, the ancillary content is nice to have but not critical to my adoption decision. I know that many faculty (myself included) have grown to depend on the proprietary multi-media content, interactive toys and test banks; but I have found over the years that I tend to collect my own or develop my own media content from open-access sources. As for test banks, often they are hardly worth it. Every single question needs to be reviewed to veryify level of assessment and alignment with learning objectives, and for accuracy - the shear numbers of wrong answers in the average publisher's test banks is staggering. Also, the majority of the examples I have experienced lock the faculty into the typical multiple-choice assessment strategy. Yes, they are handy, but I prefer to develop my own assessment strategies and items.
My criteria include:
-appropriate content at the appropriate level,
-Content accuracy, currency and completeness
-relevance
-modularity
I am not usually as concerned as some about social issues surrounding content, because I can provide that. I do however screen for certain anathema social perspectives and biases. Modularity is very important to me, because I tend to cobble together my instructional materials from multiple sources.
I appreciate peer reviewed work, but do not rely upon it - I tend to verify for myself.
Kelley
I think the criteria are general and all 11 (clarity, accuracy, readability, consistency of content, appropriateness of content, interface, usefulness, modularity, content errors, reading level, cultural relevance) factors are comprehensive enough; however, the critically of a factor could be discipline-specific.
Una, suggested I add some links in
Xpert picture attributor - http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert/attribution/
Openattribute - www.openattribute.com
This is the master list I use with faculty, but I always ask the group to prioritize what most concerns them about open textbooks and how that differs from their concerns for traditional books. That gets a lot of issues out for discussion.
1. Quality of content, literary merit and format
2. Timeliness
3. Favorable reviews
4. Permanence/lasting value
5. Authority: author
6. Scope
7. Physical quality
8. Format: print, CD-ROM, online, etc.
9. Clarity of course materials
10. Absence of content errors
11. Appropriateness of course materials
12. Interface
13. Content usefulness
14. Consistency of course materials
15. Suggested changes
16. Exemplary features
17. Cultural relevance
18. Reading level
19. Readability in terms of logic and flow
20. Accuracy
21. Modularity (or the ability to take apart, mash up and remix the content)
22. Universal accessibility (thus permitting all populations - no matter the physical constraint - to access content)
23. Color printing and graphics as an available option, in all print materials
24. Meets as many specific course articulation requirements as possible
25. Ability to transport content to modalities other than print (cell phones, and other portable devices, for example)
26. Content should be as interoperable on as many platforms as possible
27. How does this open textbook compare with the best commercial textbook available in my discipline, and/or the commercially published textbook that I am using for my course?