Introduction

Writing is a transformative learning activity: It allows learners to organize their thoughts, communicate effectively, receive feedback from others, correct misconceptions, improve and clarify their understanding, and, as a result, create an artifact that has meaning and value for themselves and others (see chapter Teaching Writing Skills with Blended Learning Approach for Schools’ learners). In their writing, students can draw from a wide variety of sources. Open educational resources (OER) and open-access materials have made it easy to connect students to a world of learning at their fingertips. However, despite the wide availability of video tutorials, open online courses, podcasts, wiki pages, articles, and even textbooks, it is challenging to find the right fit for your students in their specific learning environment, particularly in underserved rural communities or education in emergencies settings (see chapter Education in Emergencies). As educational content is increasingly available for free over the Internet, making effective use of online learning materials has become the new frontier for students and teachers. Information is everywhere; but how can learners actively make sense of their everyday information ecology and contribute to their learning environment?

This chapter outlines open-access textbooks as collaborative writing projects. In short, you enlist your students as textbook authors and editors. The class work can be based on an existing textbook, or your students can research and write their own content. It is an example of project-based learning (see chapter Problem and Project Based Learning) that offers a way to encourage students to engage critically with open educational resources, strengthen their research and writing skills, contextualize learning material to their region, language and culture and enhance coding and web literacy skills. In a multilingual classroom, it can support bilingual learning (see chapter Educating Bilingual learners in Secondary School) and target-language acquisition.

Open pedagogy refers to instructional methods that emphasise openness, cooperation, and student-centered learning. This method challenges traditional, teacher-centered approaches and encourages students to actively participate in their own and one another’s learning. Open pedagogy has been proven to have a number of benefits for students, including increased motivation and engagement, deeper learning and comprehension, and the development of crucial 21st-century skills such as teamwork, critical thinking, and communication (Garreton, 2017). Additionally, it has been demonstrated that open pedagogy increases access to education, especially for marginalised groups (Geser, 2019). Despite these advantages, implementing open pedagogy might bring obstacles, such as a lack of clear norms or best practises, student privacy issues, and problems in assessing student learning in a non-traditional context (Hegarty, 2020). Overall, the existing literature indicates that open pedagogy has the potential to be a transformative approach to education, but additional study is required to fully comprehend its impact and establish implementation best practises.

Open Pedagogy, Open-Access and Open Educational Resources

The term open educational resources (OER) was coined in 2002 during a forum held by UNESCO as the open provision of educational resources, enabled by information and communication technologies, for consultation, use, and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes. Leveraging web technologies to equalize access to education has ever since been a core motivation for the OER movement. Similarly, open access describes a publishing model for scholarly communication that makes research journals or textbooks available to readers at no cost. Some open textbooks access textbooks give the option to adapt and distribute an edited version. The idea of educational material, freely and openly accessible on the Web, attracts substantial attention. The concept is as simple as it is convincing: Free access to educational material facilitates learning. In the past two decades, the concept of open education has gained undeniable momentum. Several nations and states have formally adopted or announced policies relating to the adoption of OER and open textbooks (Wiley et al., 2014).

The lack of access to subscription-based books is a commonly cited problem for learners in low-income countries. Open access can help provide students with the opportunity to learn in the international textbook community. Open-access textbooks can reduce geographical distances and have more diverse readers around the world. Authors can address a wider audience without the barriers of paywalls, and increase their visibility and, if applicable, citations. Teachers can easily put together their teaching resources into cohesively structured books and provide access to their students in multiple formats. According to a case study by Wang & Wang (2017) adopting an open-access textbook is more work for the teacher compared to a commercial textbook. The authors suggest discipline-based communities of practice (CoP) to ease the workload problem.

Initially, the primary motivation for open textbooks was to address the high costs of learning materials in higher education, where they can account for a quarter of a student’s expenses. This led to a number of widely successful projects, such as OpenStax and BCcampus. Over time the focus shifted to pedagogic opportunities (Ferguson et al., 2019). Open textbooks can challenge the established relationship between students and knowledge (Ferguson et al., 2019). The open textbook is adaptable. Students can edit and amend an open textbook as part of their study or, as with our case study, create their own textbook as a form of authentic assessment.

Open Pedagogy: 5R Practices

Open pedagogy has emerged as an important teaching and learning practice (Baran & AlZoubi, 2020). It involves shifting from making resources accessible to impacting the practice of teaching (Tietjen & Asino, 2021). In contrast to ‘disposable assignments’ that are perceived as tedious to complete by students and are loathed to grade by instructors students, open pedagogy offers the opportunity to develop lasting, meaningful products (Wiley, 2013).

Wiley  & Hilton (2018) characterized open pedagogy along key dimensions of being free to reuse, revise, remix, redistribute, and retain (5R).

1. Retain—“the right to make, own, and control copies of the content” 
2. Reuse—“the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)”
3. Revise—“the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)”
4. Remix—“the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)”
5. Redistribute—“the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)”

Creative Commons

The 5R practices are supported by creative commons licenses. The first Creative Commons licenses were published in 2002 as a set of free, public licenses that allow creators to keep their copyrights while sharing their works on more flexible terms than the default “all rights reserved”. Creative Commons licenses are designed to share digital works globally without being impeded by legal uncertainties. They clearly answer the question: “What can I do with this work?”.

CC0 is a public dedication tool, which allows creators to give up their copyright and put their works into the worldwide public domain. CC0 allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, with no conditions.

CC BY: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use.

CC BY-SA: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.

CC BY-NC: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.

CC BY-NC-SA: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.

CC BY-ND: This license allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use.

CC BY-NC-ND: This license allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. 

WHY OPEN ACCESS TEXTBOOKS ARE SO BENEFICIAL?

Open-access textbooks are educational resources that are freely accessible online, with the aim of expanding students’ access to educational materials and lowering the cost of their education. Some of the benefits of open access textbooks highlighted by the experts/education professionals are:

• Cost savings for students: There are no costs associated with open-access textbooks, which can lower the financial strain on students and enhance their access to educational materials.
• Improved access to educational materials: Open-access textbooks are accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, making them a significant resource for students who may not have access to traditional print resources.
• Increased customization and flexibility: Open-access textbooks can be altered and customised to match the needs of certain courses or students, enabling a more personalised learning experience.
• Enhanced collaboration and sharing: Open-access textbooks can be easily shared and collaborated on, fostering the growth of a common educational community.
• Increased visibility and impact: Increased exposure and influence Open-access textbooks can be discovered and utilised by a larger audience, hence boosting the author’s work’s visibility and impact.

Collaborative Writing for Open acess Textbooks

Collaborative writing of open access textbooks can be employed in different contexts and at various levels. Examples include adapting an existing textbook to a new region or context, rewriting and improving chapters or assignments or creating an entirely new book that is published with an open license. Collaborative writing provides a social context for learning that creates interdependence among peers and a sense of independence among learners. During the collaborative process, students emulate peers to improve writing skills, share knowledge and make decisions together, deal with disagreements and conflicts, use writing strategies, and negotiate teamwork to ensure a positive experience for everyone (Fung, 2010). From the instructor’s point of view, it is crucial to mediate important steps in the process to avoid frustration and scaffold learning.

Structuring The Topic

Mindmaps are an effective tool for structuring the writing assignment, and collaboratively working on ideas. The main topic of the chapter is placed in the center of the mind map. Important themes or questions form branches connected to the center. Any theme may branch off further into subtopics. This visual technique allows writers to explore where their interests lie, and assess what they know and don’t know about the topic at hand. It is a useful prequel to the literature review.

Literature Review and Reference Management

A well-presented review of the literature together with correct citations and references significantly increases the quality of the writing product. It allows learners to engage with the latest research and evaluate scholarly positions and arguments. One of the initial steps in the writing process is the use of suitable academic databases and search engines.

Google Scholar is the biggest database for scholarly work. This frequently accessed source for scientific literature offers an effective gateway to open access publications. It is particularly important in regions that lack access to scientific literature and subscription-based databases such as Scopus and Web of Science (Singh et al, 2022). Two features are particularly useful:

• Filtering results by date (for example: Since 2020) allows researchers to get a sense of the new developments and trends in a field.
• The citation count is helpful for identifying the core, standard publication on a topic to include seminal definitions and concepts.

Using bibliographic software can save you hours of unnecessary, tedious work. Shared standards and tools such as BibTex allow writers to export and import references, add them to documents, and easily switch from one citation standard to another. Zotero is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related materials. It offers an extension for most web browsers with the ability to detect articles on a web page, extract bibliographic information, download available full texts as PDF documents,  and add the material to an offline library with a single click. Especially useful while creating a collection through imports from different sources is the option to consolidate duplicate entries. During the writing-process users benefit from the ability to add notes to each article, and the option to create excerpts and quotes by highlighting and commenting directly in the PDF documents. Zotero can be used to cite correctly within any web environment by copying a bibliography to the clipboard. Furthermore, users can export their collection as a spreadsheet and visualize publications on a timeline.

Conclusion

On the surface, open learning is everywhere. However, it is an easy trap to confound download and registration rates for Massive Open Online Courses with meaningful learning outcomes. As Wiley et al. stated: “Localization is one of the most important and least understood aspects of open educational resources” (Wiley et al., 2014, p. 786). Open repositories, collaborative writing assignments, and peer feedback can increase the quality and diversity of sources. Collaborative writing assignments based on OER materials are effective because they require students to process, arrange, and integrate existing knowledge with new concepts while fostering critical thinking about the course content.

Open-access textbooks can bridge geographical distances and attract more diverse readers and contributors around the world. The lack of access to subscription-based books is a commonly cited problem for learners in low-income countries. Open access models can help provide students in such countries with the opportunity to learn. Going further, open pedagogy can give the students and teachers the opportunity to contribute to the international textbook community. By reimagining education as an activity that serves the needs of local communities the impact of learning can be expanded, making it more inclusive and more valuable to everyone (c.f., Decolonizing Education, Innovating Pedagogy 2019).

Review Questions 

• Think about a class you are currently teaching. What is missing from your materials? Which section does not seem to work well? is there something you always wanted to do / redo? How could OER help?
• To what extent and in what ways do you want to engage your students in open learning?
• How prepared are your students to engage in informal and lifelong learning?
• What was your last successful example of an informal learning experience? What made you succeed?
• What happens when you spend less time on creating and preparing content, and more time on creating authentic assessment, giving feedback, and mentoring?
• When your teaching material is open to change, how can you create assignments that engage students in active learning?What type of materials (videos, podcasts, text, quizzes, research articles, quests, graphics, simulations, animations, charts, datasets) would your students like to have more of / less of for their learning?

Key Terms 

Collaborative Writing: Two or more people working together on a writing project.

Creative Commons: Creative Commons is both the name of a group of open licenses and the non-profit organization that develops and provides them.

Open Educational Resources: First coined in 2002 during a forum held by the UNESCO. Open educational resources (OER) are learning materials that are available for free under a creative commons license.

Pressbooks: Pressbooks is a platform for creating open access textbooks.

Podcast: First coined in 2004, the term podcasting refers to audio that is accessible on the web, is distributed with RSS feeds, and can be downloaded to players on mobile devices.

Textbook Structure: Every textbook has a structure that helps readers follow and process the material.

References

Baran, E., & AlZoubi, D. (2020). Affordances, challenges, and impact of open pedagogy: Examining students’ voices. Distance Education, 41(2), 230-244.

Charles, E. (2019). Decolonizing the curriculum. Insights, 32(1), 24.

Elabdali, R. (2021). Are two heads really better than one? A meta-analysis of the L2 learning benefits of collaborative writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 52, 100788.

Ferguson, R., Barzilai, S., Ben-Zvi, D., Chinn, C.A., Herodotou, C., Hod, Y., Kali, Y., Kukulska-Hulme, A., Kupermintz, H., McAndrew, P., Rienties, B., Sagy, O., Scanlon, E., Sharples, M., Weller, M., & Whitelock, D. (2017). Innovating Pedagogy 2017: Open University Innovation Report 6. Milton Keynes: The Open University, UK.

Fung, Y. M. (2010). Collaborative writing features. RELC journal, 41(1), 18-30.

Gibson, D., Ostashewski, N., Flintoff, K., Grant, S., & Knight, E. (2015). Digital Badges in Education. Education and Information Technologies, 20(2), 403–410.

Hegarty, B. (2020). An exploratory study of open pedagogy in higher education. Journal of Open Education Studies, 9(1), 1-13.

Hilton, J., III, Stein, J., & Johnson, A. (2017). The Economics of Open-Access Textbooks. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 28(3), 356-363.

Jhangiani, R. S., Pitt, R., & Hendricks, C. (2015). The Affordable Learning Georgia Initiative: Promoting OER Adoption in the US State of Georgia. Open Praxis, 7(1), 21-30.

Li, M. (2018). Computer-mediated collaborative writing in L2 contexts: An analysis of empirical research. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 31(8), 882-904.

Singh, V. K., Srichandan, S. S., Piryani, R., Kanaujia, A., & Bhattacharya, S. (2022). Google Scholar as a pointer to open full-text sources of research articles: A useful tool for researchers in regions with poor access to scientific literature. African Journal of Science, Technology, Innovation and Development, 1-8.

Robinson, T. J. (2014). The impact of open textbook adoption on the learning outcomes of post-secondary students. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 40(1).

Tietjen, P., & Asino, T. I. (2021). What Is Open Pedagogy? Identifying Commonalities. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 22(2), 185-204.

Wang, S., & Wang, H. (2017). Adoption of open educational resources (OER) textbook for an introductory information systems course. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 32(3), 224-235.

Wiley, D. (2014). The Accessibility, Sustainability, Scalability, and OER Adoption Model (ASSO Model). Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2014(1).

Wiley, D., Bliss, T. J., & McEwen, M. (2014). Open Educational Resources: A Review of the Literature. In J. M. Spector, M. D. Merrill, J. Elen, & M. J. Bishop (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology (pp. 781–789). Springer.

Wiley, D., & Hilton Iii, J. L. (2018). Defining OER-enabled pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(4).

Yeh, H. C., Chang, W. Y., Chen, H. Y., & Heng, L. (2021). Effects of podcast-making on college students’ English speaking skills in higher education. Educational Technology Research and Development, 1-23.

About the authors

name: Dr. Stefanie Panke

institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

website: https://panke.web.unc.edu/

Dr. Stefanie Panke is an educational technology specialist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is native German, and holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics and Literature from the University of Bielefeld, which she completed in 2012 with summa cum laude. Her research interests comprise social media, informal learning, open educational resources, and design thinking. As social media coordinator for AACE she is responsible for the blog AACE Review. Stefanie is an adjunct professor for teacher education at the Asian University for Women. She also teaches Web Science at Cologne University of Applied Sciences and Design Thinking at Münster University of Applied Sciences.

name: Israt Jahan Oeeshi

institution: Asian University for Women

Currently working as a Teaching Fellow at the Asian University for Women Graduate Program in Education, Israt recently completed her Master’s degree in Economic Policy in Global Markets from Central European University in Vienna, Austria, with a focus on Higher Education Policy and Development Economics. Israt is also an alumnus of the Asian University for Women batch of 2019 with a Bachelor’s in Economics and a minor in Development Studies. During her Master’s, Israt also completed a fully funded exchange certificate programme at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, USA, on the topic of “Inequality Analysis.” Israt’s research interests include post-covid inequalities across developed and developing countries, the comparative analysis of social costs and benefits of higher education, and future of the investments in EdTech programs. Israt aspires to make a difference in the unequal society by working on the development of sustainable policy alternatives supported by evidence-based solutions, solid research and green approaches. Israt is an avid traveller who enjoys learning about history, diverse cultures, traditions, and cuisines. Israt enjoys photography and admires creativity!