This section begins by reviewing the initial stages of Rebus’ publishing process: the acquisition of users and editing of materials. After individuals approach Rebus with a particular project, the organization creates a project thread and summary on the forum. It recruits participants for each project by sending calls through the forum, email, and social media. Rebus has created sign-up spreadsheets, which detail the participants who have agreed to work on a particular project. Individuals agree to participate by filling in their name and contact information on the sheet, or by replying via the forum or email. The workflow hereafter can be significantly varied given each project’s specific needs and goals. Depending on the situation, Rebus may contact participants to confirm their specific role and the attendant deadlines. The editorial workflow is established with the project leads and editorial teams. All editing that follows occurs on Google Docs or other collaborative software.
Overall, the Rebus Community forum functions as a channel for acquiring Open Textbook projects. This section explores the original conception of the forum and follows with a discussion of current challenges and inefficacies in light of Rebus’ acquisitions and editorial goals.
2.1 The Forum and its Original Conception
The Rebus Community forum was conceived as a collaborative platform for fostering a global collegiate community of Open Textbook creators (Rebus 2016). It was conceived a public, web-based space to begin Rebus’ work of developing processes for publishing Open Textbooks, and as a framework model for a more robust project management software that would provide publishing tools and resolve relevant issues in the production process. The forum was designed as a space to encourage discussion, and bring communities together for developing Open Textbooks. Both the forum and the project management software were conceived as betas, to be tested by an audience composed of Open Textbook producers and adopters, that could be used to easily create and manage other kinds of OERs.
Once the forum’s goals had been laid out, the team chose Node BB for integration into the project management software once the latter was built. Node BB is an Open Source community forum software that is easily integrated into existing websites. Next, a clean design was incorporated into the basic Node BB forum, to create an intuitively navigable discussion board. Several basic categories were created, including those for Projects and General Discussion (See Figure 1). The forum was originally available to select users via an email link, however, within a few weeks, it was opened to all individuals around the world. At the time of the writing of this report, the forum has 409 users, and includes six main categories: New To The Rebus Community, Active Open Textbook Projects, Working Groups, Rebus Community and OTN Office Hours, Help and Tech Support, and General Discussion.
Currently, Rebus is using the forum primarily to track and manage its fifteen pilot projects, and to acquire project leads, authors, editors, proofreaders, reviewers, and adopters for various projects. Importantly, projects reach Rebus and are posted on the forum at different stages: the Introduction to Philosophy project, for example, was conceived on the forum from scratch, with participants building the Table of Contents through a series of discussions. In contrast, the History of Applied Science and Technology project was posted on the forum after volumes one to three had already been fleshed out by the project lead and her team. Other projects, like Financial Strategy for Public Managers arrived focusing on finding reviewers and getting the book ready for adoption. Given the diversity of issues these projects bring, Rebus’ goal with each is to learn what is necessary to complete specific tasks in the publishing process, and how best this process may be replicated by other individuals in the future. The knowledge Rebus gains from these processes is serving as the framework through which the project management software will be built.
The Rebus Community forum brings together the project leads, authors, editors, proofreaders, and formatters of all projects onto a single platform. Ideally, the forum centralizes communication, and makes discussions between all these participants available to the public. Given that Rebus aims to open up knowledge of Open Textbook production, this centralization and transparency is essential for enabling both current and new producers to understand, build upon, and improve the varying strategies for creating Open Textbooks. These wide-ranging projects thus afford Rebus the opportunity to learn from a diverse range of experiences, presenting various issues that it seeks to resolve at a scalable level. As the next subsection shall demonstrate, challenges in Acquisitions and Editorial prove particularly salient to Rebus’ mission.
2.2 Challenges in User Acquisitions and Editorial
The primary hurdle to Rebus’ acquisitions process is its small Rebus Community user base. In the future, as Rebus grows, the full power of its collaborative vision will be apparent. Moreover, not all users on the forum are active, and those who are active are experts in very specific fields whose skills and knowledge may not readily transfer to other projects. For instance, during a nine-month period, the History of Applied Science and Technology project has seen only seven users engaging the forum and offering contributions to the project. Similarly, the Financial Strategy for Public Managers project received no responses to its request for reviewers, and neither has the newly posted Human Geography project. In contrast, the Introduction to Philosophy, Science of Human Nutrition, and Literature Reviews for Education and Nursing projects have received tremendous response, with the general discussion page for Introduction to Philosophy being viewed over 57,200 times by users and containing over 230 posts. Consequently, Rebus’ current user base is small and too specialized to tackle the wide array of projects in its stable. As a result, it is necessary to rely on other sources for recruiting contributors to most collaborative projects, with each method producing its own specific challenges.
Cold calling via email is one way of contacting prospective collaborators. Unlike the forum where projects rely on the current user base to signal their interest in participating, cold calling allows project leads and Rebus’ management team to directly reach out to subject matter experts for under-discussed projects. Cold calling begins by tailoring copy to each individual, describing the Rebus Community’s mission, the current project, and the role the individual would play. Depending on the traction projects have received on the forum, cold-calling is often the main way to recruit collaborators onto a project.
Most projects, including History of Applied Science and Technology, Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship, The Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature, and Human Geography require numerous cold calls. These cold calls take time, with low opening and conversion rates. Moreover, this issue was compounded by the fact that, initially, there was no record-keeping to track the individuals who had already been contacted to work on a particular project. However, as of summer 2017, Rebus has begun tracking each call, and the type of response per project. This, too, is only partially successful, as there are currently multiple spreadsheets for different projects, which means that time may be lost in contacting the same people multiple times. Rebus would benefit from a centralized system for tracking the collaborators whose help it solicits, and the projects for which their assistance is sought.
Resolving these logistical issues is imperative for Rebus to understand pain points in an open, collaborative textbook publishing process. Tracking cold calls represents only a portion of the problem. There is still the issue of responses, which can broadly be categorized into the following types:
- Non-responders: A majority of emails sent do not receive a response, or are met with an auto-response email.
- Busy with other commitments: A small portion of responses is from people unable to participate due to other commitments. Rebus’ team considers this the ‘polite no.’
- Interested, but not right now/not my area of expertise: These parties are interested in the project, but cannot commit to tasks at the current moment, or mention that their specialization lies in a different topic.
- Yes, absolutely: A small portion of the cold calls is responded to with an overwhelming “Yes, I would love to be involved!”
For volume two of the History of Applied Science and Technology, Rebus sent out 83 emails to faculty around the world, asking them to join the project as authors of short 1000-word sections. We received a total of 16 responses (19.2%) and 67 non-responses (including 6 auto-responses, for a total of 80.8%). Three individuals declined to contribute, while six asked only to be notified of the project, three are still debating a contribution, and four agreed to submit a short section. These varying responses raise concerns regarding faculty and university staff’s knowledge about Open Textbooks and their willingness to actively participate in an Open Textbook project. Emails asking faculty to peer review or adopt a book have similar statistics. Based on the high number of refusals and non-responses, it may be possible that faculty do not take Open Textbook creation seriously or find it worth their while. This issue thus connects problems in acquisitions to those in marketing, which is treated more fully later in this report.
Cold calling is currently a tedious process whose outcomes often rest on contingencies including people’s availability, interest, and even their desire to work towards OERs. Moreover, even when a cold call is successful, there are still significant issues that may affect the project team. Rebus is still not sure as to whether it prefers users to enter data on the forum page first, where discussion is limited, or whether it wants to direct them straight to the spreadsheet page. At present, cold calls generally result in users being pushed straight to the sign up sheets. Consequently, Rebus’s ability to learn from the discussions that occur is hampered—an issue that may be resolved by standardizing the sign up process.
Apart from issues of transparency, advertising the usefulness of the forum is also an issue. Given the lack of discussion on certain projects, the project management team is continuously thinking of ways to initiate discussions, but these often rely on project leads and participants to keep the conversation going on an unfamiliar platform. In cold call emails, the decision to direct users directly to sign-up sheets rather than to the forum was reinforced by the lack of clear incentives to join the forum. The project management team at Rebus had multiple conversations regarding the best method to market the forum as either “a directory/resource for OER creation” or “a platform for discussions on Open Textbook creation” and faced difficulty in picking one purpose over the other. At present, the forum is still in its early stages and is by design doing the work of the project management software. As a more customized project software is developed and deployed, it is uncertain what role, if any, the forum software will play for faculty and staff, and how this can be better communicated to potential users.
2.3 The Limitations of the Forum
Despite these issues and limited resources, Rebus has been successful in developing and learning from projects. Financial Planning for Public Managers and Media Innovation Entrepreneurship are being used in classrooms, and instructors at various institutions are implementing an in-course assignment to expand the Antología abierta de literatura hispána. However, Rebus’ efforts are hampered by the forum’s inefficacies. Given the forum’s role in centralizing communication, promoting transparency, and maintaining records, resolving these issues will be key to ensuring Rebus’ continued growth and the advancement of its Open Textbook projects.
The forum’s current structure has several limitations, including issues surrounding threading project discussions. For instance, the Introduction to Philosophy project initially included only one thread with a main project summary post. Users could reply to this main post, but there was no mechanism to create a separate post or start a new thread. As more people responded, the thread grew longer, less manageable, and more confusing for users already involved in the discussion. For new users looking to join the project, the existing conversation proved overwhelming. Conversely, with Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship, many individual threads were created for both general and chapter-specific discussions, but there was little discussion on either. For new users coming to this project on the forum, such lack of conversation can convey a general disinterest in the project, and can dissuade them from joining the forum even when substantial collaborative work on the project is occurring outside it. As such, the lack of a moderated and standardized approach to forum, category, and thread management has given Rebus the insight necessary to revise and improve its processes for potential collaborators.
A corollary of such varying categories and threads is that navigation becomes quite difficult. Discussions about projects are nestled in the forum. To reach these discussions, users must navigate through top-layer categories, such as Projects, Working Groups, and Help and Tech Support (Figure 1). Next, they must access the project thread, such as [GEO] Human Geography: Principles and Applications [lead: Paul Hackett, USask], and, finally, can click on the sub-thread (General discussion and project summary) to comment on an ongoing conversation (Figures 2, 3, and 4). As mentioned earlier, users who see a thread with little-to-no conversation taking place may hesitate to join the discussion. This lack of conversation may, in part, be due to the difficulty of reaching specific discussion threads. Consequently, the amount of conversation on the threads needs to be finely balanced so that it may act as social proof for new users, and provide valuable exchanges and intelligible discussion for current users.
Another challenge hindering widespread adoption of the forum is users’ preference for in-person or video call discussions. The Media Entrepreneurship and Innovation project, for example, involved at least three calls with authors, and many more with the two project leads over the course of four months. Despite the large amount of work put in to drive conversation, there was little-to-no discussion on the forum. Authors found the video calls easier for clarifying concerns they had while writing, and for quick updating the team on the status of their task. In order for Rebus to keep track of such projects is to integrate video calls within the setup of the forum. One way to do this is asking collaborators to post minutes from video call meetings to the forum, instead of sharing these by email.
Moreover, the forum is ideal only as a general discussion space and is not appropriate for editing content. Since the forum is built on a third-party software meant to facilitate discussion, users who are authoring or editing chapters for an Open Textbook will use collaborative editing platforms like Google Docs to share and edit drafts of their work. Moreover, unlike the forum, Google Docs integrates seamlessly with Google accounts, which many project participants already have, thus omitting the need to sign up on a new platform. Many people are more familiar with Google’s services and enjoy its collaborative features such as comments, tracked changes, and editing in suggestion mode. The forum does not have any mechanism to import large text files or edit them within the platform, which means people prefer Google services.
Finally, given that Rebus’ mandate to develop scalable models for book publishing relies partly on tracking the projects being carried out under its auspices, it is important to note that even continuous activity of users on the forum does not mean Rebus can track progress effectively. Thus far, the only metrics being stored weekly is the number of new members. This number only indicates whether a person has signed up to the forum, and does not track whether the user has expressed interest in any projects, or volunteered to complete a particular task. Since much project work happens outside the forum, this metric does not accurately indicate a project’s progress. Moreover, the forum’s analytic capabilities are also quite limited. Administrators can only see page views on the forum as a whole, and have not set up integration with Google Analytics to better track traffic to and on the forum.
2.4 Directions for Improvement
When Rebus pitches projects to prospective collaborators, many individuals wind up not joining the forum even while agreeing to collaborate. Part of this low conversion rate results from the forum’s inefficacies and from the difficulty of conveying its utility for collective collaboration. In considering possible improvements to the forum, this section seeks to identify suggestions that will make the forum indispensible, and which will feed into the overall product development of Rebus’ tools in the future.
In order for Rebus to develop a standardized model for Open Textbooks, it needs to be able to quantify and track participation and interest in projects as well as in the Rebus Community more generally. Setting up a Google Analytics property for the forum will allow Rebus to track traffic to the site and set up campaigns to monitor which channels are effective drivers to the forum. Ineffective channels or social media platforms can then receive more marketing or, conversely, Rebus can direct their efforts to proven platforms. Google Analytics will also make it possible to trace which projects receive the most interest and from which demographics and psychographics, even allowing Rebus to target specific countries moving forward.
At the project level, it would be best to ask project leads to prepare a spreadsheet or template with metrics that people can update. Christina Hendricks, the project lead for Introduction to Philosophy, has recently asked Rebus to provide her with a tracking sheet to better manage the project. While this sheet does not contain metrics, it provides a clear and concise overview of the project, similar to a progress report. Participants also have access to the sheet, in case they want to see the status of various sections of a book.
Automating Rebus’ record-keeping in the project management software could also prove helpful; however, this proves difficult at present, as many collaborators do not work on the forum. Consequently, automation would produce inaccurate results and could be incorporated effectively only when the majority of project work takes place through the forum. These problems reveal how the issues confronting Rebus’ collaborative publishing project are complex and multi-layered, and need to be addressed with due diligence and forethought as development proceeds.
The forum is currently undergoing a redesign and a large portion of the project management is being shifted to a beta test of the Projects software. While the redesign addresses issues of appeal and excitement in the forum’s aesthetic, the Projects software will resolve the issue of hierarchy of categories in the forum. All the projects currently managed on the forum will be slowly imported to the new software, with project specific discussion linked to the project object/topic in the new software. Such changes will not interrupt the discussions on the forum, but will integrate them into the projects software. In so doing, the software will provide links to and promote discussion on the forum. This move will be beneficial to the tracking of projects, as analytics can be built into the new management software. Additionally, this lets Rebus direct prospective participants straight to the project management software instead of the forum. Current developments of this sort, when conducted in conjunction with the suggestions made above, will allow Rebus to greatly improve its data collection on current projects, moving the company nearer to its goal of producing scalable models for Open Textbooks and other OERs.