It’s December. With the year’s end comes reflection: what have we accomplished during this latest orbit around the sun? What has been the impact of our work?
At Pressbooks, we can measure impact in a variety of ways. For example: the total number of platform users (18,000+), the number of books available in Pressbooks Directory (4,900+), the number of open publishing networks we support around the world (140).
What’s far harder to quantify is the impact of the ideas, information, learning and teaching that happen because of the open educational resources (OER) and capabilities Pressbooks’ platform makes possible. Our annual Pressbooks Staff Favorites list is one way we celebrate this dimension of Pressbooks’ impact. To broaden this celebration, this year we put out an open call inviting any community member to submit their favorite new books available in Pressbooks Directory.
Note: Since OER and open content are ever-evolving, we’re including books that were published or updated since 2021.
Celebrating Great Books and How People Use Pressbooks
With our request to share favorite Pressbooks creations of the year, we also asked people to share what makes these books awesome. How do these creations demonstrate Pressbooks being used to innovate in teaching, learning and content creation?
Here’s what we found in this year’s list of 17 community favorite books:
- Collaboration: Nearly all are products of collaborative authoring, scholarship, and/or content creation
- Equity & Inclusion: Over half (9) center on equity and inclusive approaches that address the needs of people with a variety of backgrounds, learning modalities and abilities.
- Diversity & Representation: Nearly half (8) represent diverse, multicultural voices and experiences.
- Interactivity: For five books, interactive learning activities are a distinguishing part of what makes them awesome.
- Student-Authoring: Five books feature student-authored and/or co-designed materials
- Accessibility: Three give particular attention to accessibility and accessible learning.
- Localization: Three books adapt and customize OER to fit localized context or needs
- Other Learning Innovation: Two books are multilingual, and one’s awesomeness includes how it remixes OER from multiple authors and sources.
Drumroll Please … Community Favorites List!
As you peruse this list, keep in mind:
All books are freely available in Pressbooks Directory.
Nearly all may be cloned, revised, remixed and localized – in case you’d like to adapt or build on the great work showcased here.
Discipline: College & Career Success
Career and Workforce Readiness
Creator(s): Careerspace – Trent University
Network: eCampus Ontario
Publisher: Careerspace – Trent University
Why it’s awesome: With the rise of work-integrated learning, this book is designed to ensure students are well-prepared with essential workplace skills. This OER is a six-module course that helps learners practice, reflect, and develop the strategies they’ll need to succeed in the workforce. Perhaps the best part is the amazing graphics (apart from the fantastic resource as a whole).
✓ Collaboration
✓ Localization
Liberated Learners: How To Learn With Style
Creator(s): Co-designed by Students, Faculty and Staff at Trent University, Brock University, Seneca College, University of Windsor, McMaster University, Cambrian College and Nipissing University
Network: eCampus Ontario
Publisher: Trent University
Why it’s awesome: Building on a predecessor project that focuses on educators, Ontario Extend: Empowered Educator, Liberated Learners prepares students to learn effectively in the digital realm. Its four modules explore different dimensions of digital learning: The Learner, The Navigator, The Collaborator, and The Technologist. Look out for particular highlights: student co-design and bespoke beats you can study to!
✓ Collaboration
✓ Equity & Inclusion
✓ Interactivity
✓ Multilingual
✓ Student Authoring
Discipline: Communication & Writing
Creator(s): Eds. Liz Delf, Rob Drummond, and Kristy Kelly
Network / Publisher: Oregon State University
Why it’s awesome: Created to teach persuasive writing and rhetoric, this book helps students to understand and analyze how persuasion works, encouraging them to become not only better communicators, but also more thoughtful and skeptical consumers of the content they encounter. A small editorial team adapted materials from over a dozen authors of openly-licensed material, revising them to best meet student needs, while also authoring original material. The resulting work is an engaging, entertaining, and educational publication.
✓ Accessibility
✓ Collaboration
✓ Diversity & Representation
✓ Remix
Effective Professional Communication: A Rhetorical Approach
Creator(s): Rebekah Bennetch; Corey Owen; and Zachary Keesey
Network: University of Saskatchewan
Why it’s awesome: This textbook for professional communication presents basic principles of rhetoric, technical writing, and communications for professional settings. The authors are very proud of this work, and particularly they are really proud of how many H5P activities and other interactive elements are included to help students better embrace the learning and course materials. The authoring team also worked hard to position this text for their Canadian students, including a Land Acknowledgement that features prominently.
✓ Collaboration
✓ Interactivity
✓ Localization
The RCM 401 Speakers’ Handbook
Creator(s): Rebekah Bennetch and students enrolled in the University of Saskatchewan’s Certificate of Professional Communication course RCM 401: Oral Rhetoric
Network: University of Saskatchewan
Why it’s awesome: This book comes out of a public speaking class in which students have the option to pick their end of term project: they can do the traditional paper OR they can work with others to produce an OER chapter of advice for future students. We love the idea of students helping students! This project transfers material from past classes into Pressbooks because it’s such a great, accessible medium to produce quality-looking content.
✓ Collaboration
✓ Student Authoring
Discipline: Education
Learning To Be Human Together: Humanizing Learning
Creator(s): Students, Faculty and Staff at OCAD University, Mohawk College, Brock University, Trent University, Nipissing University, University of Windsor, University of Toronto-Mississauga
Network: eCampus Ontario
Publisher: OCAD University, Learning To Be Human Together Team
Why it’s awesome: Through the vision led by Jess Mitchell of OCADu, a process of humanizing online learning has never been made more human. This book is evidence of what inclusive processes can produce, being co-designed by students, faculty and staff. It explores what it means to humanize teaching and learning acknowledging that relationships and connection are foundational in inclusive learning and teaching. Also, Unicorn Bacon.
✓ Accessibility
✓ Collaboration
✓ Diversity & Representation
✓ Equity & Inclusion
✓ Student Authoring/Co-design
Pulling Together: A Guide for Teachers and Instructors
Creator(s): Bruce Allan; Amy Perreault; John Chenoweth; Dianne Biin; Sharon Hobenshield; Todd Ormiston; Shirley Anne Hardman; Louise Lacerte; Lucas Wright; and Justin Wilson
Network / Publisher: BCcampus
Why it’s awesome: Designed as part of an open professional learning series developed for staff across post-secondary institutions in British Columbia, this important work supports systemic change through Indigenization, decolonization, and reconciliation.
✓ Collaboration
✓ Diversity & Representation
✓ Equity & Inclusion
The OER Starter Kit for Program Managers
Creator(s): Abbey K. Elder; Stefanie Buck; Jeff Gallant; Marco Seiferle-Valencia; and Apurva Ashok
Network / Publisher: Rebus Community
Why it’s awesome: This book is a new resource for OER program managers and other support staff working on OER initiatives. Providing advice, case studies, and external resources of interest to the community, the Starter Kit for Program Managers’ biggest “claim to fame” is likely its collaborative development. It was developed by a team of lead authors and editors and openly peer reviewed by 86 subject matter experts who contributed their time and feedback to the book’s development.
✓ Collaboration
The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (So Far)
Creator(s): Apurva Ashok; Zoe Wake Hyde; and Kaitlin Schilling
Network / Publisher: Rebus Community
Why it’s awesome: The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (So Far) is for anyone thinking about starting an open textbook project. It starts at the beginning of the process, with chapters on project scoping and building a team, and then moves on to content creation and editing, getting feedback and reviews, coordinating release and adoptions, and sustaining the book’s community. In this guide, we encourage you to reflect on your current pedagogical practices by keeping diversity, equity, and inclusion in mind throughout your open publishing journey, with the goal of creating valuable learning experiences that are accessible, equitable, and inclusive.
✓ Collaboration
✓ Diversity & Representation
✓ Equity & Inclusion
Discipline: History
Los Orígenes Hispanos de Oregon
Creator(s): Olga Gutiérrez
Network: Open Oregon
Why it’s awesome: This publication provides more than 250 years of little known history of the Pacific Northwest coast, offering examples of the ethnic diversity of the Hispanic expeditionary crews and featuring histories of the exploration of the Pacific Northwest that are not normally presented in history books.
✓ Collaboration
✓ Diversity & Representation
✓ Equity & Inclusion
✓ Interactivity
✓ Multilingual
✓ Student Authoring
Discipline: Performing Arts
Creator(s): Kiara Pipino (Ed.)
Network: SUNY Create
Publisher: SUNY Oneonta
Why it’s awesome: This is a general education theatre 101 book for non-majors. It has a conversational style and features multiple chapter authors who share their first-hand experience as professionals in the production of theatre. Many chapters include interviews with other practicing artists from all aspects of the field. It was co-created with several students, one of whom wrote the Appendix chapter.
✓ Collaboration
✓ Diversity & Representation
✓ Student Authoring
Discipline: Social Sciences
Critical Perspectives on Technology and the Family
Creator(s): Susan K. Walker
Network / Publisher: University of Minnesota Libraries
Why it’s awesome: This open textbook highlights an underrepresented area within Family Studies, and one that is not easy to write about! Along with its easy-to-parse organization and attractive formatting, the book provides additional resources and readings on each chapter that make it an excellent educational resource.
✓ Interactivity
Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach
Creator(s): Deborah P. Amory; Sean G. Massey; Jennifer Miller; and Allison P. Brown
Network / Publisher: Milne Library SUNY Geneseo
Why it’s awesome: This introductory-level textbook takes a cross-disciplinary approach to helping learners understand core concepts through a variety of perspectives. It is one of the first open LGBTQ studies books available, and it was an amazing product of collaboration!
✓ Collaboration
✓ Equity & Inclusion
Creator(s): Kat Klement and Stephen G. Krueger
Network: KU Libraries
Why it’s awesome: With rising tensions from governments and groups against transgender individuals, it is more important now than ever to ensure that we are intentionally inclusive and welcoming of trans people in our spaces. This work provides valuable resources for training authors and students on the importance of having trans-inclusive OER, along with direct materials for accomplishing that training.
✓ Equity & Inclusion
Understanding Homelessness in Canada
Creator(s): Kristy Buccieri; James Davy; Cyndi Gilmer; and Nicole Whitmore
Network: eCampus Ontario Open Library
Why it’s awesome: This book brings together lived experience representation and the most recent research to explore homelessness in Canada, from a range of different perspectives. Real life scenarios, embedded interview videos, artwork and interactive learning activities help learners explore and understand complex contributing factors and issues around homelessness.
✓ Collaboration
✓ Diversity & Representation
✓ Equity & Inclusion
✓ Interactivity
✓ Localization
Women Worldwide: Transnational Feminist Perspectives
Creator(s): Eds. Tracy Butts, Patti Duncan, Janet Lockhart, and Susan Shaw
Network / Publisher: Oregon State University
Why it’s awesome: A small editorial team worked with over 45 contributing authors globally to produce an updated edition with brand-new content. The work focuses on how interconnected our world is, and how these interconnections, both positive and negative, affect the ways people experience gender.
✓ Accessibility
✓ Collaboration
✓ Diversity & Representation
✓ Equity & Inclusion
For Our Community, a Note of Thanks
We can’t yet the year close without expressing gratitude to the phenomenal community around Pressbooks, OER, and open publishing.
THANK YOU to each community member who shared favorites to include in this post!
THANK YOU to the authors, content creators, editors and educators who do remarkable things with Pressbooks!
THANK YOU to the network managers, librarians, learning designers and administrators who facilitate this work!
May your holidays be merry and bright, and may the new year bring continue to bring wondrous creations from across the community.
Feature Image Attribution: Photo by Kenta Kikuchi on Unsplash