open textbook

05 Sep

A Model for Open Textbook Sustainability

Posted by cel4145 in oer, open textbook, sustainability

I've been thinking a lot about David Porter's post, Nowhere Near Critical Mass, and OER sustainability. David makes a strong point,

. . . my belief was that it would take actual teachers, instructors and students who could demonstrate success in an OER context to bring consolidation and sustainability to the goals of the open movement. Further, it seemed that little real effort was occurring on the inclusion or promotion of teachers and teaching, and that OpenEd conferences continued to be conversations within an insular community of theorists and advocates – not the stuff of implementation, nor a demonstration of broad impact.

I don't want to try to speak about OER in general, but when it comes to open textbook production, I agree with David. For the open textbook movement to become successful, it needs to go outside the innovators who began it, the activists who are part of the community. Regular teachers will need to be involved, and open textbook adoption and publishing will have to become a common element of an academic and teaching life.

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14 Jun

CFP: Writing Spaces Seeks Proposals for the 3rd Volume

Posted by cel4145 in creative commons, oer, open textbook

Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing is an open textbook series for composition seeking proposals for essays for our 3rd volume. Each Writing Spaces book contains peer-reviewed collections of essays all composed by teachers for students, with each chapter freely available for download from our website under a Creative Commons license.

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14 Jun

Announcing the publication of Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Vol 1

Posted by cel4145 in creative commons, oer, open textbook

Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1, is now available for free download. This open textbook collection includes sixteen essays written for the first year composition classroom, all released under Creative Commons licenses, all written by writing teachers for students.

Topics in Volume 1 of the series include academic writing, how to interpret writing assignments, motives for writing, rhetorical analysis, revision, invention, writing centers, argumentation, narrative, reflective writing, Wikipedia, patchwriting, collaboration, and genres.

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21 May

Writing Spaces to Publish Two Volumes

Posted by cel4145 in composition, open textbook

I want to share the news about Writing Spaces. Thanks to the many wonderful proposals by people in our field (over 100), there will be two volumes published in the Winter of 2010. From the Writing Spaces announcement:

Each volume will contain 25-30 essays on topics such as writing as a process, invention, primary research, collaboration, web 2.0 technologies, revision, citation, peer response, new media, rhetorical theory, writing centers, topic development, conducting secondary research, ethnography, metacognitive/reflective writing, and personal narrative writing, to name a few.