Presentation at the 2014 BCNet conference outlining the BC Open Textbook project and the customizations made to the PressBooks WordPress plugin to enable textbook authoring for the project.

1. One Button
Publishing
• Brad Payne & Clint Lalonde
• BCNet, Vancouver
• April 29, 2014
@clintlalonde @bdolor

2. open.bccampus.ca
“Connect the expertise, programs, and resources
of all BC post-secondary institutions under a
collaborative service delivery framework”
2
3
Open Education
Student Services & Data Exchange
Collaborative Programs & Shared Services
1

3. open.bccampus.ca
“Connect the expertise, programs, and resources
of all BC post-secondary institutions under a
collaborative service delivery framework”
Open Education
1 Support & promote the development & use of Open Educational Resources
Support instructors who want to use technology in their teaching practice
OER Global Logo by Jonathas Mello is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Unported 3.0 License

4. open.bccampus.ca
“Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of
educational materials that are in the public domain or
introduced with an open license. The nature of these
open materials means that anyone can legally and
freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them.”
UNESCO
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-educational-
resources/what-are-open-educational-resources-oers/
What are OER?

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A textbook licensed under an open
copyright license, and made available
to be freely used by students,
teachers and members of the public.
What is an Open Textbook?

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Open Licenses

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Visual notes of John Yap announcement, Giulia Forsythe
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gforsythe/8094691691/
Used under CC-BY-SA license
First province in Canada
40 free and open textbooks available for the
highest enrolled 1st & 2nd year post-secondary
subjects in BC
BC Open Textbook Project

8. open.bccampus.ca
We have a problem (2 actually)
Images: http://www.openeducation.net/2009/09/17/beyond-textbooks-andy-chlup-discusses-digital-learning-models/
used under CC-BY license

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Students spend $1200/yr on textbooks
4x rate of inflation over past 20 years
70% students have not purchased textbook for a
course because of price
Problem #1

10. Page |
Free is more than just a good deal

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Problem #2 Ownership & Control
iPod DRM by *n3wjack's world in pixels used under CC-BY-SA license
eBook on eBook by DWRL at U Texas used under CC-BY-SA-NC license
Students
Faculty
©

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Issues & Goals
Students Faculty
Free
Choice of formats
●Web
●Mobile
●Print
●eBook
1. Easy to find
2. Quality
3. Modify or create
Can retain permanently

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1 year ago...
40 Subject Areas
0 Textbooks

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1 year ago...

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Faculty: Easy to find

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Faculty: Easy to find

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Faculty: Easy to find
open.bccampus.ca
API

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Faculty: Easy to find
open.bccampus.ca
API

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Faculty: Easy to find

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Faculty: Quality

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Faculty: Quality
API

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Faculty: Quality

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Faculty: Quality

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Faculty: Modify

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Faculty: Modify
Write Once
Publish Many

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Student: Choice of formats

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Student: Choice of formats

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Student: Choice of formats

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Student: Choice of formats
$9.19 (B&W)
$20.04 (Colour)
244 pages

31. PressBooks
modifications

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Context
PressBooks is open source
•modifications were only possible within this context
•the narratives for open textbooks and open software are similar

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The Button

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Modifications
PressBooks and PressBooks Textbook
•What functionality is required for open textbooks?
o about 16,500 code additions to PB core
•What if that functionality deviates from pressbooks.com?

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Symbiosis
PressBooks and PressBooks Textbook

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Reuse - PBT Plugin
Creative Commons
•the creative commons configurator
•modifications made to allow derivative works

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Revise - PBT plugin

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Revise - PBT Plugin
Adapt, Adjust, Modify
•math equations - PB LaTeX plugin
•table buttons - MCE Table button plugin
•textbook buttons - MCE Textbook button plugin
o exercises (with LRMI metadata)
o key takeaways (with LRMI metadata)
o learning objectives (with LRMI metadata)

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Revise - PBT Plugin
LaTeX image rendering service:
Preserving images in export routine:

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Remix - PBT Plugin

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Remix - PBT Plugin
Importer
•EPUB
•DOCX
•ODT
•WXR/XML
Open Textbooks
•Download links to 47 open textbooks

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Remix - PBT Plugin
Pseudocode (DOCX import):
- test if it’s a valid Zip file
- get the file paths to content
and metadata
- get the content and metadata
- get endnotes, footnotes, and hyperlinks
- process them (they are in separate documents),
save them
- import a monstrous XSLT stylesheet
- throw the styled content into the DOM
- parse by Chapter, insert into PB

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Redistribute/Retain - PBT Plugin

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Redistribute/Retain - PBT Plugin
Textbook API
•the solution to the problem of redistributing protected files got me
thinking about how to implement textbook API’s
Redistribute and retain files for free
•Download links to each of the latest export files (epub, pdf, xhtml,
hpub, mobi, wxr, icml) on the homepage

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Redistribute/Retain - PBT Plugin

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Download, import, reorder chapters

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The future
Enabling Adaptation
Development of PB Community (Developer & User)
●https://github.com/BCcampus/pressbooks-textbook
●https://github.com/pressbooks/pressbooks
Continued EDU & OTB specific enhancements

48. Thank YouQuestions?
open.bccampus.ca
@clintlalonde @bdolor
#otsummit