Welcome to Workshop 3: Revising and Publishing. In this workshop we will guide you through the process of reviewing, finalizing, and publishing your OER. By the end of this phase, you'll have shared them with your Proofreader and any other reviewers, incorporated any suggestions and edits, finalized your materials, and shared them out with the world!
A key value for the creation of high-quality course materials is to ensure that the course materials align with the course competencies and/or learning objectives in order to provide the information and resources learners need to achieve the stated competencies.
Now that the materials are created, it’s important to return to them with fresh eyes and objectively consider if the project goals have been met.
At minimum, you should review your own work and your project Proofreader will review your materials with a specific eye toward usability and accessibility, but you are also welcome to obtain and incorporate feedback from others. You may decide to reach out to a trusted colleague or mentor. Students can also give valuable feedback and suggestions for improvement.
Note that review can take place once all the content has been created and edited or it can happen on a rolling basis if that strategy makes the most sense for your project.
Throughout these workshops, we've talked about key values of the project. These key values include things like student-centeredness and accessibility.
To help guide any reviewers of your materials, frame a key question on which you would like feedback. This can also be useful to help frame your own review of the materials.
Here are a few examples of these key questions, but yours should be adapted for your project, audience, and purpose:
Once you’ve re-read and reviewed the materials on your own, it’s time to get some feedback!
The Proofreader for your project will consider your key question and review all of your materials with a focused eye toward usability and accessibility of the content. They'll use the Proofreader Checklist as a starting point but may provide additional comments as well.
Trusted colleagues, mentors, and other instructors in your field can all provide valuable feedback and peer reviews for your materials. Should you choose to reach out to peers or other reviewers, we encourage you to adapt the rubric below as needed and use it to guide their review and feedback. Note that we do not have funds to pay peer reviewers at this time so collecting this kind of feedback is strictly optional on your part and theirs.
Classroom review, or piloting the materials with students, can be a great opportunity to collect valuable feedback and improve your materials. You may consider providing a survey to your students or just asking for informal feedback as they engage with the materials.
If possible, strive to offer a web-based format, a printable version, and an editable version of your materials. This may be a single file or a couple of files (such as docs or pdfs), or these may be separate platforms and material types.
There may be situations where not every piece of content transfers well to other types of media (as in the case of videos or interactive activities), but consider offering text-based, static, and/or simplified versions for offline use.
Formatting also includes styling your text, images, tables, and any other parts of your content. Overall it is about structuring and presenting your content so that it can be used and understood by readers in the best possible way.
This is also an opportunity to create a cover image for your project and/or resource. Some people may think that open resources don’t require covers, because they are simply ‘digital texts.’ In fact, covers are an important way to give your OER a face and visually engage potential readers and adopters! What’s more, open resources can be printed and it can be nice to offer more than just plain text on a plain background.
A cover image can also help to attract potential adopters by conveying the book’s subject matter and overarching themes. For students and readers who will interact with the materials, the cover can distinguish it from other resources, and allow it to show its ‘personality’ up front. While the possibilities are endless, we suggest keeping covers simple, and dedicating a reasonable but not excessive time to creating the design.
Adding front and back matter to your OER is a good way to include information that complements or supports the main content, without necessarily being central. It can also help round out the appearance of your materials and lend it some of that professionally created appeal. Front matter really sets the tone of the book and offers a lot of introductory information to a potential adopter or reader. This is their first point of contact with your work, and what they will skim through before reaching the main content. This section of your OER may help someone make a decision about whether the OER is right for them and their use-case. Back matter, on the other hand, provides supplemental features that support readers and provide additional context for potential adopters or adapters who may be remixing your resource. Here are some examples of front matter content that can be adapted for your resource as appropriate.
This section will vary significantly depending on the type of materials you have created, but it’s a good idea to write a paragraph or two to describe how to navigate the resource, access offline or editable versions, interact with the content, etc. Perhaps you also include a few words of advice about the best strategies for learning the course content.
Here is an example review statement you may wish to adapt for your materials:
This resource was created by [name and role] with support from the Open Western OER Fellowship, a grant program and professional development opportunity designed to provide support in development of new Open Educational Resources for Western Technical College and beyond.
Project management support for the development of this resource was provided by [name and role]. This resource was peer reviewed by [name(s) and role(s)] and proofread by [name and role]. Their contributions were structured around considerations of the intended audience of the book, and examined the comprehensiveness, accuracy, and relevance of content. Review also focused on clarity, consistency, organization structure flow, grammatical errors, and accessibility. This resource would not be the robust, valuable resource that it is if it not for their feedback and input.
Additional support for the project was provided by [list additional contributors or resources and how they contributed to the project].
Adapted from the Review Statement Template from Rebus Community, CC BY.
Within the published OER product, consider creating and adding an ‘adoption survey’ to help track adoptions of the materials and a ‘suggest an edit survey’ for users to suggest corrections and improvements.
Here are some examples from the WTCS Medical Terminology textbook with simple forms created in Microsoft Forms:
Even if your OER has been born web-based, there’s something to be said about the power of print. Print remains an important option for students, many of whom still prefer to engage with content in a physical format. There are also readers who will opt for print, given that digital and online versions necessitate reliable access to digital devices and an internet connection. Print-on-demand is therefore a good way to support accessibility and choice for students, even if you yourself don’t plan to use a print version in teaching.
Giving your resource a physical presence can also be invaluable for how it is perceived. Some adopters will still prefer to see a printed copy of an OER: that materiality can make it all-the-more “real” in their perception. Library and bookstore staff can help you explore options and answer questions about providing printable versions of your materials, should you choose to do so.
This is the big moment! It's time to publish!
Use the Project Summary from your initial Project Plan to draft a publication announcement. This announcement should describe what you made, what makes it distinctive, and any future plans you may have for the materials.
Then you'll send your publication announcement and information about how to access the materials (e.g. file attachments, links, etc.) to library@westerntc.edu and copy your Project Manager. Library staff will take care of adding your materials to WISELearn and the WTCS OER Repository. Once your materials are posted and live, they will update your publication announcement with links to access the materials and send it back to you in confirmation.
Library staff can also help you with sharing in other larger OER repositories, should you like to share with a wider academic community. They can also assist with creating an archived copy of the materials for future reference.
In addition, consider sending the final publication announcement to your colleagues, supervisors, and anyone else who helped work on the project. This is a big deal and now is the time to celebrate!
Your colleagues and students will also find it helpful to have complete and accurate information about your course materials included in the textbook list and on your course syllabus. Although students will not need to purchase required materials for your course, it can still be helpful to include the title, author, a link to the materials, and any notes within your course syllabus, in your Start Here folder in Blackboard, and on the textbook list (submitted to your division assistant and ultimately shared with the bookstore). This ensures complete information is available about the materials you will use in your course. This information is also then included in any information about course materials for your class and provides transparency for the appropriate library, bookstore, and Institutional Effectiveness staff to accurately tag your course as an OER course for Client Reporting purposes.
Here are some examples of how you may choose to list your course materials in your syllabus, on the textbook list, and elsewhere:
[Course Material Title] by [Author] is available at [Location], [License].
I created the materials for this course and they are freely provided for you in Blackboard within the folder for each week. There is nothing that you need to purchase for this class, but should you wish to download or access the materials in alternate formats, you may find them [in the WISELearn OER Repository here].
[Course Material Title] by [Author] is available at [Location], [License].
This course uses free Open Educational Resources for all course materials. There is nothing you need to purchase for this course, but should you prefer to have a print version of the materials, you may purchase it from eCampus by locating this course by number and selecting the option you prefer. You may also print the materials yourself or exercise any of the other rights enabled by the materials' open license.
Your Project Manager or a Librarian can also help you with specific questions or examples you may have.
The content for this OER Creation workshop has been adapted from portions of the following sources, which are openly available thanks to Creative Commons licenses.
and video slides are adapted from a template by Slides Carnival, CC BY.
