Open Textbooks for the Trades: How Washington State’s Welding OER Transforms Vocational Learning
The creation of Washington State’s open welding textbook Introduction to Welding is a compelling example of how Open Educational Resources (OER) can transform vocational education.
The first of its kind, this textbook was produced as part of Washington Open ProfTech, a statewide initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Education to create high-quality, accessible resources for professional and technical education.
The project has produced six full open textbooks, providing instructors and students with freely available, customizable materials:
Introduction to Welding
Introduction to Healthcare Professions
Introduction to Criminal Justice
Introduction to Early Childhood Education
Introduction to Hospitality
Introduction to Machining
Pressbooks ran a webinar showing the Introduction to Welding project in partnership with OEGlobal and CCCOER. You can read a recap of our takeaways below or watch the full episode on YouTube.
About Introduction to Welding
Summary from Introduction to Welding
“Introduction to Welding is an essential guide for you as you start your Welding program or explore career options in Welding. This full-color text provides a comprehensive introduction to the foundational concepts that are common across the Welding profession. It serves as a solid base for further learning in specific courses and is a great foundation for working in welding shops. The book’s goal is to offer an introduction so that you can familiarize yourself with key concepts before you begin more complex coursework.”
Overcoming Challenges in Vocational Education OER
Developing OER for vocational fields comes with unique challenges. Many existing welding resources are outdated or insufficiently visual, and instructors—often adjunct faculty—have limited time to create or adapt content.
Welding is a highly tactile, hands-on skill, making it difficult to translate into text-based materials. To produce a comprehensive and accessible textbook, the team needed to address both the technical complexity of the subject and the realities of instructors’ schedules.
To overcome these challenges, the team focused on creating structured, visual, and engaging learning materials:
- Detailed diagrams and exploded views: Students can see how welding machines and consumables fit together before entering the lab.
- Photographs of shop floors and field work: These images help learners contextualize the textbook content in real-world environments.
- Video demonstrations embedded in the text: Students can see proper techniques demonstrated for them (such as proper electrode feeding techniques) before attempting themselves.
- Accessible alt text and screen-reader friendly PDFs: Ensuring all students, including those with disabilities, can fully engage with the materials.
David emphasized the importance of visuals for new learners:
“Having images, especially you know, we have some students that have never worked with tools before. And so, to have them be able to see what the different tools are… it was really important for us to have that in the book.”
Humanizing the Textbook and Building Comprehension
The textbook goes beyond visuals to engage students and encourage deeper understanding. Personal stories, like April Cyaltsa Finkbonner’s journey into welding, help students connect to the material. As one faculty author explained:
“Including stories like April’s allows students to see the real-world paths people have taken. It gives the textbook a human face, which makes the material more engaging and relatable.”
Review questions are designed to promote comprehension rather than rote memorization, prompting students to apply, analyze, and synthesize information. Interactive H5P activities throughout the chapters provide practice and immediate feedback, helping students reinforce learning as they progress.
Collaborative Development and Team Support
Developing a 900+ page textbook over 18 months required careful planning and teamwork. The authors and contributors began with training and preparation, particularly on accessibility, to ensure the final product could be used by all students. Early discussions focused on chapter structure, content coverage, and co-authoring strategies.
Quality assurance processes ensured that all content was accessible, all links worked, and formatting was consistent. Funding support was crucial as it allowed the project team to compensate authors for their time outside of teaching, hire editorial and quality assurance support, and provide technical assistance throughout the process.
The project’s organized, collaborative approach meant that even complex content—like welding codes, equipment diagrams, and shop-floor procedures—could be translated into a highly structured, accessible, and visually rich textbook.
Impact: Improved Learning and Flexibility
Even in its early pilots, the textbook demonstrated remarkable improvements in student outcomes. Students exposed to the materials in the pilot program showed dramatic increases in academic performance. As Ashley reported:
“During the pilot, student GPAs increased from approximately 2.6 to 3.9. And they were taught by the same instructor. That’s honestly unheard of.”
These results underscore the power of well-designed OER to not only provide access to educational content but also to improve mastery of complex, hands-on skills. The interactive elements, detailed visuals, and structured review questions helped students internalize concepts before applying them in the lab, reducing frustration and accelerating learning.
The project also demonstrated the benefits of flexible, modular design. Chapters could be selectively used or adapted for different courses, and each section had its own URL, allowing students to access individual topics without downloading the full 900+ pages. Schools could also clone the textbook in Pressbooks, customize it for their own curricula, and integrate it directly into LMS systems like Canvas. This adaptability ensured the textbook could meet a wide range of instructional needs across Washington State and beyond.
Introduction to Welding shows what’s possible when OER meets vocational education. With rich visuals, interactive exercises, and real-world stories, students can grasp hands-on skills before stepping into the field, boosting confidence, comprehension, and even GPAs. Its flexible, modular design lets schools adapt content for any course, making high-quality, accessible learning scalable and sustainable.
You can watch the full webinar on our YouTube channel: