Day/Time: Thursday, May 26, 10:15am – 11:15am
What it takes: Successful Open Publishing Programs
Presenters
- Amy Song, Pressbooks
Description
From my position as customer success manager of Pressbooks, I have watched a number of institutions start and grow their open publishing operations, usually from within the library. It has been a great pleasure to see these programs become more formalized, and to watch the open books and other forms of OER impact students’ lives.
For this session, I have gathered stories from folk behind some of the successful open publishing programs I’ve seen. I will begin by discussing the story of how they got involved in open publishing. Did they advocate for the creation of the program? Were they teaching at the time and needed an alternative textbook? What struck them about open publishing?
Next, I will list the challenges, successes, and surprises involved in growing open publishing programs. The goal with this portion of the session is to share practical advice derived from real life experiences.
Finally, I’ll ask the audience to share their experiences doing the labour of open publishing. This portion of the panel will be an open conversation, during which we’ll pull out key pieces of advice to turn into a blog post that can be shared throughout the open publishing community.
Conversations with OER Creators: Advice for Accessibility
Presenters
- Elena Azadbakht, Health Sciences Librarian, University of Nevada; Reno
- Teresa Schultz, Social Sciences Librarian, University of Nevada, Reno
Description
Open educational resources (OER) aren’t truly accessible to all if they’re not made accessible for disabled users. However, making OER accessible is not easy and can come with plenty of barriers, including lack of time, money, guidance, and user-friendly tools. With barriers to accessibility already identified, less is known about what leads to successfully making an OER accessible. This presentation will share the results of a qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with OER authors and support staff – including librarians – to discover factors that helped lead to known accessible open textbooks, such as having a supportive team and input from students. The presenters will discuss the common themes from these interviews and how librarians who support the publishing of OER can incorporate them into their own work. The presentation will also discuss what role the broader library and open education community can play in supporting this important work, including providing support and advocating for accessible authoring and hosting platforms.