Session 12 — Special Topics and Review

@feb20-cohort, we’re down to our final session tomorrow before we begin to meet monthly. Our session will start at 9am ET as usual on Zoom (at our standard meeting link). Tomorrow, we’ll discuss fair use, print-on-demand, Pressbooks features like the glossary and table of contents, and conduct a review of open publishing process we’ve been learning about so far.

Here’s what we’ll refer to:

  1. Handout: Special Topics and Review
  2. Slides: Special Topics and Review

I’ll also spend a bit of time tomorrow talking about what you can expect in the check-ins to come. Looking forward to seeing you all soon!

@feb20-cohort - thank you for your patience during today’s call, and my apologies for going slightly over time. Thank you also for your commitment over the past 12 weeks, which have flown by faster than I can believe. Since this has been our last session in the course portion of the program, I’d love your feedback to help shape the program for future cohorts — fill out the evaluation (anonymously or not), or if you preferred, message me to share your feedback directly. You can also contact @LeighKP or @zoe if you wanted to pass your thoughts to someone other than me. Thank you to those who have already submitted your input — I sincerely appreciate it.

Monthly Check-in Information

We’ll be meeting monthly going forward, and here’s what you should know about our check-ins:

  • Our first check-in will be June 10, at our usual time (9am ET) and at our usual link. I’ll share a reminder before the date with the link and the meeting password details (these will stay the same as they have so far).
  • The structure of the check-ins will be similar to our sessions so far, but instead of formal sessions, I’d like us to use the chance to do a deeper dive into smaller topics or questions you might be grappling with.
    • I’ve put forward a few ideas on the June Monthly Check-in thread, and would love your suggestions for anything else you’d like us to discuss during that month. Ideally, if you could share these ideas a week or ten days prior to the session, so others can second their interest in the topic and for me to prepare a short mini-session.
  • The monthly schedule won’t change anything about our interactions in the discussion space. Don’t feel like you need to wait for an upcoming check-in to ask a question. Post in the space when you have something to share or if you have a question, tagging individuals or the cohort broadly with the cohort tag (@feb20-cohort)

If you have any other questions, please let me know!

Transcript, Resources, and Questions

There was a lot of conversation in the chat today that I missed during the session, and would encourage you all to revisit the transcript. Here are the resources that were shared:

@Daniel-Hauptvogel also had a question for the group on the Creative Commons Certificate Courses — has anyone been through this program recently and wants to share their experience with Daniel? @asantiago2 if I recall, you’ve participated in the program before, and may have more to say? I know that their certificate resources is available online and licensed CC BY, including their syllabus for the upcoming term.

Session Recap

We hope that 12 weeks of the TSP have helped you see that the open publishing process is not as mysterious or complex as you may have thought! You may have seen some patterns forming between each of the stages we’ve covered. While we’re not doing an in-depth overview of each stage, we’re hoping that you can keep in mind these general principles to guide you along your way:

  • Plan ahead and revisit your approach at each stage (think through the process, create supporting documents, and meet with your team before diving into action)
  • Be public about the work on your project (so everyone on the team is on the same page, and so others know how to chip in or offer support)
  • Consider your audience and their needs from the very beginning (so your resource is more accessible, usable, and valuable)
  • Collaborate and provide pathways for people to join (different perspectives can strengthen your resource, and more people can help share the workload)
  • Nothing is set in stone or unchangeable (your resource can mould to fit changing needs or goals, and can be easily modified even after it is released)
  • Books and communities go hand in hand (you are creating both an OER and a group or team around this OER who is invested in using it and seeing it live on)

We talked about copyright and fair use, and the process that you can go through if you’re thinking about incorporating differently licensed elements in your OER. Thanks to @mattruen for his input in putting together this section of the session! We briefly covered what you need for your book to be available via print-on-demand and considerations with different POD providers (I’ve added a list of the different providers I mentioned in the handout). Our last topic for the day was a look into Pressbooks features like the glossary tool and multi-level table of contents — the examples shared on the call are listed in the handout, as are specific instructions in the Pressbooks User Guide. Any questions about these topics or others can be shared in the discussion space, where we can continue the conversation!

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