User:Jtneill/Grants/Student-authored open textbooks 2010/Generic guidelines

Video overview of the student-authored open textbook project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d86CICLwmMc (4 min.)

The problem/need

 * 1) Assessment: Need for authentic assessment tasks which:
 * 2) Teach real-world skills
 * 3) Create usable outcomes for the academic and broader community
 * 4) Textbooks: Need for open, online textbooks:
 * 5) Lack of open textbooks
 * 6) Lack of local content
 * 7) High financial cost and restricted copyright of commercial textbooks
 * 8) Collaborative, online writing skills:
 * 9) Need for collaborative, online writing and multimedia communication skills:
 * 10) Need for staff to write and edit alongside students to help develop students' critical thinking, writing and learning skills

The proposal
A student-authored open textbook learning and assessment exercise


 * 1) The goal for students is to:
 * 2) author a textbook chapter in a collaborative editing environment
 * 3) create an online multimedia presentation to accompany the chapter
 * 4) develop and demonstrate:
 * 5) subject-specific knowledge
 * 6) effective writing and communication skills
 * 7) The goal for academic staff is to:
 * 8) facilitate student confidence and success in approaching a novel task
 * 9) co-create (as an editor and co-author) a good quality free and open online textbook
 * 10) The goal for the textbook is to:
 * 11) Provide a niche textbook freely usable by anyone, but in particular which be an additional textbook or alternative to commercial textbooks
 * 12) Be freely usable by anyone
 * 13) Provide a meaningful and engagement learning and assessment exercise for students
 * 14) Become

Basic steps

 * 1) Platform: Decide on an online platform and learn to use it e.g., Wikiversity or Wikibooks
 * 2) Table of contents: Develop a table of contents for the book, with proposed chapters (more chapters than students, to allow some choice) - Example
 * 3) Guidelines: Develop textbook chapter guidelines to help orient and guide students through the process - Example
 * 4) Sign-up: Invite students to sign-up to a chapter - or propose their own chapter - Example
 * 5) Student training: Provide training for students to:
 * 6) Explain the concept and mechanics of the project, including
 * 7) Philosophy
 * 8) Marking criteria
 * 9) Creating a user account
 * 10) Form and use peer-review teams
 * 11) Plan the chapter and get feedback on the plan
 * 12) Learn basic online editing
 * 13) Text formatting
 * 14) Linking
 * 15) Using images
 * 16) Tables
 * 17) Collaborative editing and online communication
 * 18) Learning to use the editing environment could be facilitated by having students develop learning journals (or e-portfolios) in their user space - Example
 * 19) Brainstorm possible generic parts of a textbook chapter - Example
 * 20) Draft the chapter
 * 21) Get peer-review and redraft
 * 22) Create multimedia presentation - Example
 * 23) Submit the chapter
 * 24) Marking and editing: The lecturer/editor marks the chapters and provides feedback and edits towards a final product
 * 25) Distribution: The book can then be downloaded as a pdf or printed
 * 26) Evaluate: What worked? What didn't?
 * 27) Consider student feedback?
 * 28) Consider peer review of book and/or project?
 * 29) Succession planning: What will happen the next time the unit is taught?
 * 30) Continue work on improving the book?
 * 31) Write new chapters?
 * 32) Or tackle a different book/project?