Examples of Interesting Approaches Using PressBooks

Hi everyone

I am new to this community, and I thought it would be a good place to try and see how others are using Pressbooks in interesting ways. I am working on a resource now that I want to try to embed media, perhaps organise differently. Does anyone here have some awesome examples to share with me!

Lucas

Hi Lucas,
We use Pressbooks for Rebus projects and there are several books currently in development (but not yet public) that are helping us 1. learn the best ways to style elements of the book with the tool; 2. create some resources and documentation around how best to use Pressbooks to achieve common needs in textbook and ancillary content; and 3. recommend feature improvements to Pressbooks (there is some overlap between our staffs). In my experience, including a link to a video will look as though it’s embedded in the Web book. However, if you’re doing all formats (ebook, print), I recommend including a screenshot that links to the video, hosted elsewhere, and then a caption or footnote that helps print readers locate the video. One public book I know of built on Pressbooks that showcases some interesting elements, including multimedia, is this one: https://openresearch.pressbooks.com/chapter/section-three-open-dissemination/ Hope this helps!

Hi, lizmays thanks for the reply and sharing the examples. I like the way in the examples that they have shared audio files directly in the PB. Using a screenshot for media makes sense to me so that it remains a live link for the ebooks etc. I look forward to seeing some of the books that are still in production to see different examples or styling, organisation and the incorporation of ancillaries. Have you seen any example of anyone embedding a quiz or a poll?

@lucas.wright Hey Lucas, I can put on my Pressbooks hat and jump in on that last point. PB doesn’t support interactive elements out of the box at this stage, but some of our other OSS users have used H5P for quizzes in particular with really great results. @swagstaff might be able to share some Unizin examples?

Pressbooks is looking at integrating H5P so it’s available to everyone, but handling interactive content across all formats (web + PDF/print + ebook) is a bit of a challenge that we want to get right. There are a few other features ahead of it on the list, but watch this space.

Zoe thanks for sharing, I am excited about such interactivity as it starts to really blur the line between a resource and a course. I will watch this space for any updates and any example in this area would be appreciated.

@lucas.wright I’ll be sure to share anything we come across!

We do have a fun challenge at the moment with one of the Rebus projects we’re supporting: Sight Reading for Guitar. It involves a lot of videos, as well as text and images, and has to work across formats so students can read from printed scores, on screen or in video form. We’re working on how to handle the formatting at the moment, but will be sure to share the results once it comes together!

@zoe said in Examples of Interesting Approaches Using PressBooks:

OSS

Hi Zoe

Just to clarify does using H5P in PB require a plugin?

Sorry I figured it out – currently a WordPress plugin. Sure looks interesting though!

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@zoe and @lucas-wright Sorry I’m so late to the conversation. We are using H5P and some other plugins to add interactive activities and other enhancements to our open web books at UW-Madison. I’d be happy to share more about what we’re doing and how if the question is still relevant?

@swagstaff thanks for getting back to me. I would love to chat more about this. Are you going to be at Open Ed perhaps? I am actually using H5P for a Pressbooks project since I asked this. I am interested in how you are dealing with the export routines. Currently, we are using the Multiple Choice content type but including textual questions as an ancillary for people downloading the PDF.

@lucas.wright Yes–I will be at Open Ed next week. Let’s talk then. We’re not really doing much to support H5P fallback in the various export formats, but I’m really happy to see that it’s on the newly released Pressbooks development roadmap (1st item), so hopefully we’ll make some progress on this in the coming year.

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Hey all! Here is my contribution to an “interesting approach” for the use of PB. In the e-book I created for my course, I developed a chapter related to a theory for socially constructed knowledge in online social media systems. It is based on David Weinberger’s “Too Big to Know” book which was supported at its release with various in-person presentations. I used one of the recorded presentations on YouTube and created an H5P interactive video as part of the readings and media for the weekly module.

Here is the chapter: SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE – Q & A NETWORKS AND WIKIS.

The construction of the chapter itself has been an ongoing experiment. The structure of the information is based on the following:

  • Overview
  • What you should be focusing on
  • Key terms (not in this chapter)
  • Readings & Media: Thematic narrative (in a nutshell)
    Readings & Media
  • “narrative glue” between items to lend coherence to everything
  • APA citation, handy for copy/pasting
  • Twitter/website links to key authors/organizations (not in this example)
  • References