{"id":3189,"date":"2015-09-22T08:43:27","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T16:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/?p=3189"},"modified":"2025-08-18T13:01:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T20:01:20","slug":"byo-oer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2015\/09\/byo-oer\/","title":{"rendered":"BYO OER"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I struggle with textbooks, yet I need a form of context that students understand intuitively. In my rejection of traditional\u00a0texts, I have been exploring both the new online pathways-though-text offered by publishers like Cengage and Pearson. My experiment with Pearson <a href=\"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2015\/08\/canceling-the-experiment\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">went badly<\/a>, and reminded me that the answer is still open resources, free if possible.<\/p>\n<p>Right now all my classes have these elements:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Textbook or context reading, sometimes with quiz questions (about 15% of student time)<\/li>\n<li>Lectures I&#8217;ve written and recorded, with quiz questions I wrote (about 20% of student time)<\/li>\n<li>Primary sources inside those lecture, and that used to be in my printed workbook (about 10% if they read them)<\/li>\n<li>Constructivist primary source collection creation and writing (about 40%)<\/li>\n<li>Writing on those collected primary sources (about 15%)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The main challenge is how to balance the textbook reading, and any accountability via quizzes, with the rest of the workload, particularly the primary sources inside the lecture.<\/p>\n<p><em>US History II<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Open Education Resources include history textbooks, but there are very few. <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-3190 size-full\" style=\"margin:12px 0 12px 12px;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/openstax_us-history_700x906.png?resize=200%2C259&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"OpenStax_US-History_700x906\" width=\"200\" height=\"259\" \/>After much searching, I have discovered <a href=\"https:\/\/www.openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one I like for US History<\/a> II, even though it is left-leaning (a whole chapter on the New Deal? really?) and needs some reorganizing. Unlike most of the OER history texts, it has review questions, is written and peer-reviewed by historians, and comes out of a respected university (Rice). It even looks like a textbook. OpenStax&#8217;s system allows a somewhat cumbersome but handy way to reorganized the sections and chapters. I can even rename them. After about 24 hours, it creates a solid PDF version of the book, with a table of contents, repaging and automatic transferring of questions and terms to the appropriate section. While it will take time to extract the questions for quizzes, I think it&#8217;s worth it given the quality of the text. I will likely lose the focus on the primary sources inside the lecture &#8211; the textbook is too large. But since my US students tend to be at a lower level than my other classes, they likely need both the security of an ordinary-looking textbook and the information it provides. I am testing chapters this semester in all three online sections, even without quiz questions.<\/p>\n<p>But US is it. There are no similar quality resources available for Western Civ, World History, History of England, or History of Technology (my new class!).<\/p>\n<p><em>History of Technology<\/em><br \/>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3191\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/bookcreator.png?resize=576%2C172&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"BookCreator\" width=\"576\" height=\"172\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/bookcreator.png?w=576&amp;ssl=1 576w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/bookcreator.png?resize=300%2C90&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px\" \/>So for Western Civ I tried to create a book from Wikpedia articles, using Wikipedia&#8217;s Book Creator. This has not gone well. Wikipedia is for the most part fine from a factual perspective for common areas of history, but some sections are written in too much detail by total fanatics of that particular era or subject. I have spend many hours trying to make it work. For History of Technology, however, I might just need a basic Western Civ overview as background &#8211; all else would be articles and primary sources, in addition to lectures. I have created a book from a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/History_of_Europe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">single overview article<\/a>. I can add my own stuff with PDF using Preview, perhaps, or just have it online.<\/p>\n<p><em>Western Civ<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"  wp-image-3192 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/103book.png?resize=292%2C378&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"103book\" width=\"292\" height=\"378\" border=\"2\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/103book.png?w=1275&amp;ssl=1 1275w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/103book.png?resize=232%2C300&amp;ssl=1 232w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/103book.png?resize=768%2C994&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/103book.png?resize=791%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 791w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 292px) 100vw, 292px\" \/>Frustrated with the Wikipedia book, I began copying Wikipedia text of the sections I liked into a Word document, and editing. For Western Civ I, I have finished. I have a <a href=\"http:\/\/lisahistory.net\/hist103\/103textbook\/FullTextbook.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">complete textbook<\/a> of Wikipedia text edited carefully by me, with main terms in bold, the primary source documents from within the lecture included at the end of every chapter, and quiz questions I wrote from the resulting book. I am using it for the first time this semester in both the online and on-site sections of the class.<\/p>\n<p>It will take time, but it looks like I&#8217;ll be doing the same for Western Civ II.<\/p>\n<p><em>History of England<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It is the only class with a published item students much purchase. I wrote my own quiz questions out of it. When they stop publishing <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=WlGgAAAAMAAJ&amp;sitesec=buy&amp;source=gbs_atb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Penguin Illustrated History of England and Ireland<\/a>, I&#8217;m in trouble.<\/p>\n<p><em>Conclusions<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I have had to take open resources in hand myself &#8211; I have found nothing that can be adopted wholesale, like a traditional texts. But traditional texts have their own problems, of coverage, rigidity, poor supplements, bad quiz questions, etc. And history texts are costing over $100 now, which wouldn&#8217;t be so bad except they aren&#8217;t good enough for that kind of money. And my own texts I can edit, re-edit &#8211; they can evolve over time at no cost to the student except for printing if they&#8217;d like to print.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d like to share all this. The Wikipedia books aren&#8217;t mine &#8211; I&#8217;ve done the editing but only written some of the text, and adding documents I have been using for years, most of which have passed copyright clearance on more than one occasion when custom published in previous book efforts. If I do construct quiz banks out of the OpenStax chapters, I&#8217;d like them to be available for others to use (my created book already is, inside the OpenStax CNX system). OER should be, well, O.<\/p>\n<p>But it looks like it&#8217;s not enough to do OER. Looks like you have to create Build-Your-Own OER.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I struggle with textbooks, yet I need a form of context that students understand intuitively. In my rejection of traditional\u00a0texts, I have been exploring both the new online pathways-though-text offered by publishers like Cengage and Pearson. My experiment with Pearson went badly, and reminded me that the answer is still open resources, free if possible. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[37,5,10,13,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to","category-media","category-online-teaching","category-pedagogy","category-teaching"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9881,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3189\/revisions\/9881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}