How a Young Irish University Built a Community-Driven Open Publishing Network

Quick Facts

Institution: Technological University of the Shannon (TUS)

Location: Midwest and Midlands regions, Ireland

Founded: 2021 (through the merger of two institutes of technology). Open Press launched in 2024.

Institution Type: Multi-campus public technological university with seven campuses

Primary Goal: Build a sustainable, institution-wide open publishing network that supports teaching, learning, research, and knowledge sharing

Why Pressbooks: Provides a shared publishing platform that supports OER creation, student-facing resources, institutional publishing, accessibility features, and collaborative workflows across diverse user groups

Key Success Factor: A strong Community of Practice that brings together librarians, academics, student support teams, and emerging publishers to share expertise and build momentum for open publishing

Featured Project: Your Essay Builder — an openly licensed, interactive academic writing resource featuring videos, worksheets, and H5P activities that can be cloned and adapted by educators

Overview

The Technological University of the Shannon (TUS) is a multi-campus university located across Ireland’s Midwest and Midlands regions. Established in 2021 through the merger of two institutes of technology (Athlone Institute of Technology/AIT and Limerick Institute of Technology/LIT TUS brings together 7 campuses and 15,000 students across disciplines including business, computing, engineering, health, hospitality, and the arts.

As a young and rapidly evolving institution, TUS has taken an intentionally agile approach to open educational practices (OEP), focusing on collaboration, inclusivity, and sustainable knowledge sharing across campuses.

In November 2024, TUS launched its Open Press using Pressbooks, following a successful pilot year exploring open publishing workflows across the institution.

Today, the Open Press supports a growing community of staff and students and is increasingly used as a foundation for open educational resources (OER), institutional publishing, and knowledge dissemination.

A Young Institution Building an Open Future

TUS’s structure as a newly formed multi-campus university has shaped its approach to open education. Without legacy constraints, the institution has been able to intentionally design an open publishing model from the ground up.

“We are a very young organisation… we are not tied to more conservative or traditional approaches to publishing. We can jump into open publishing really with our two feet.”

 — Celine Peignen, Head Librarian

This flexibility, paired with the support of senior management who understood the importance of the open press, has enabled TUS to explore open education not just as a set of projects, but as an evolving institutional capability.

Challenge: Building a Sustainable Model for Open Education Across Multiple Campuses

As a newly formed multi-campus institution, TUS faced the challenge of building a unified approach to open education while supporting diverse academic and professional contexts across seven campuses.

Key priorities included:

• Supporting consistent creation of open educational resources across disciplines
• Enabling collaboration between librarians, academics, and student support teams
• Reducing barriers for staff and students engaging with open publishing
• Building awareness and confidence in open licensing practices
• Creating a sustainable model for scaling open education beyond early pilot projects

At the same time, TUS wanted to ensure that open education was not treated as an isolated initiative, but embedded into broader institutional practice, including teaching, learning, student support, and research dissemination.

Solution: A Shared Open Publishing Platform with Community at the Core

TUS implemented Pressbooks as the foundation of its Open Press, providing a shared publishing environment for staff and students across all campuses. The goal was not only to support OER creation, but to build a sustainable, institution-wide publishing practice that could scale over time.

A key early priority was supporting adoption across different stakeholder groups, including:

• A dedicated OER Librarian providing hands-on workshops, consultations, and training
• Strong engagement from student support and accessibility services
• Active participation from academic and library staff
• Ongoing development of institutional workflows for open publishing
  

A central pillar of TUS’s approach is its Community of Practice, which meets once or twice per semester. These sessions bring together existing users and those exploring open publishing, supporting peer learning and shared problem-solving across disciplines and campuses.

“Our community of practice is a great way of engaging current users but also people that are thinking about publishing and using Pressbooks.”

 — Celine Peignen, Head Librarian

Topics have included practical workflows, accessibility tools such as H5P, and emerging publishing practices across the institution.

Building a Culture of Participation

A key principle of TUS’s approach has been encouraging broad participation across the institution.

Rather than limiting open publishing to a small group of specialists, TUS actively promotes contributions from across staff and student communities. This includes ongoing efforts to:

• Identify new stakeholder groups across the university
• Embed open publishing into existing academic and professional workflows
• Encourage reuse of materials from workshops, conferences, and institutional events
• Support confidence-building in open licensing and sharing practices

Senior management support, along with engagement from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in Ireland, has played an important role in enabling this cultural shift.

“I’m very cognizant that our staff and our students were doing great things, and we try to promote our open press as a really innovative dissemination mode for people to use. Our strength really lies in our diversity and inclusivity. So we encourage everybody to contribute”

 — Maura Flynn, Open Educational Resources Librarian

Expanding Use Beyond OER

While initial efforts focused on open educational resources, TUS has increasingly positioned its Open Press as a broader institutional publishing platform.

Use cases now include:

• Accessibility and student support resources
• Research dissemination outputs
• Conference and workshop materials adapted into openly licensed publications
• Training materials and cross-departmental knowledge sharing initiatives

This approach allows the institution to extend the reach and longevity of existing academic and professional activities by transforming them into openly accessible resources.

A notable example includes using Open Educational Resources to diversify library collections and support thematic initiatives such as International Refugee Week, demonstrating how open publishing can be integrated into broader institutional programming.

Project Highlight: Your Essay Builder

As part of its growing Open Press, Technological University of the Shannon (TUS) has developed a number of student-facing publications using Pressbooks, including the Pressbook Book of the Month for February, Your Essay Builder: Clear Steps to Plan and Structure Your Essay.

Designed for undergraduate and returning learners, this inclusive guide supports students in developing academic writing skills through a structured, step-by-step approach to essay planning.

The resource combines written guidance with videos, worksheets, and interactive H5P activities, creating a multi-modal learning experience that supports different learning styles.

Importantly, Your Essay Builder is published as a living, cloneable book, allowing educators to adapt and reuse the content in their own teaching contexts. It is also openly licensed under a Creative Commons licence and freely available to learners and educators.

View the institution’s Pressbooks catalog

Looking Ahead

TUS is continuing to evolve its Open Press as part of a wider institutional commitment to open education and knowledge sharing.

Future priorities include expanding engagement with the research community, developing peer review processes for open publications, and further integrating open publishing into academic and administrative workflows.

By treating open publishing as a shared institutional capability rather than a standalone initiative, TUS is building a sustainable model for long-term impact across teaching, learning, and research.

Lead photo of the engineering building at the Athlone campus. Provided by TUS