Session 10: Formatting and Release Preparation (May 2024 B Cohort)

Open Publishing Projects Certificate May 2024 B Cohort
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Hello @may24b-cohort, I just want to remind you that we’ll be meeting tomorrow from 1:00-2:30 p.m. Central for our second session in Phase 3. We’ll be discussing Formatting and Release Preparation. Please also be prepared to provide updates on your teams and projects. See you tomorrow!

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I attended yesterday meeting

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Good morning,
I apologize I will not be able to attend. We have an accreditation visit today at school and a meeting at that scheduled time.

See you next week!

Sincerely,
Angie Shoemake

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Good morning,
I will be joining today’s session late due to a class time conflict.

Thank you,
Anna MacDonald

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Good morning,
As others have mentioned, we have an accreditation visit today and will be meeting with the surveyors this afternoon. Will pick back up next week.

Thanks,
Leigh

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Good morning,

Thanks for the reminder. Unfortunately, I cannot attend today’s meeting. I have a mandatory meeting with the University President. I will watch the recording.

LaTonya

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Unfortunately, I cannot attend any of the Tuesday 1 p.m. meetings because I have a class at that time. However, I will watch the recordings.

Best regards,
Debra

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Thanks for a great session today, @may24b-cohort! Here are some key links from today’s session:

Today’s session was about helping your teams focus on the planning of the two pivotal aspects before the release of your OER: formatting and promotion preparations.

It might be hard to imagine this endpoint in your projects given where you are in the publishing process right now, but I want to assure you that you will eventually get to there!

As you work to manage these many small details, what’s useful at this phase is to keep a running list and tick off items as you complete them. The main things to keep in mind are that your book is available in web, editable, and offline formats, and that there’s a short announcement that you can share on release day. It can sometimes be difficult to draw the line with final tweaks and touches on the book, so work with your team to reach a point where you are all happy.

In the first part of the session, we discussed the sequence of formatting process, starting with formatting the main content in Pressbooks. Then add non-textual elements before you finally review the work. We provided a proposed formatting workflow template for your team’s planning. As with other stages of the OER publishing process, collaboration is key. We encourage you to assign tasks and seek input and advice from resources on your campus.

After formatting, you’ll want to focus on the final touches to help your book feel like a well-curated and professionally created resource. Frontmatter and backmatter can help your resource feel more rounded and professionally created, as can a well-designed cover. Adding information like a review statement, accessibility statement, book metadata, and adoption form can provide readers with more information about the quality and efficacy of your resource, and also provide pathways for others to find the book and report their use.

Finally, the time will come when you pull together what you already have for promotion purposes, so you can focus on filling in any gaps. But most importantly, savor the moment — this is the milestone you’ve been working towards, and it’s finally here! Pause and celebrate with your team. LOUIS provides a home for your textbook and course, but think about how you can promote the work of your team in other ways.

There was a great question today from @illya.tietzel about how to handle descriptions for concept maps, which are likely to be more in-depth than typical alt-text image descriptions. I mentioned that one potential way to handle that is to include a long description with internal linking. Here is a step-by-step explanation from the BCcampus Accessibility Toolkit about how to create a long description in Pressbooks. There’s some other useful guidance in that particular chapter about image accessibility. It’s a great resource to refer to when reviewing your content for accessibility.

Next week, we’ll dive into ways to keep your book up to date following release, as well as how to understand the longer-term impact of your team’s hard work via adoptions and other non-traditional metrics for assessing learning. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns. See you next week!