Steve Covello - ID and online instructor at Granite State College (USNH)

Hello everyone! I have been an instructional designer and online instructor at Granite State College since 2011. GSC’s enrollments are >80% online. I am also GSC’s PressBooks admin and created an open textbook for the course I teach.

I have presented for SUNY, NERCOMP, AAEEBL, and have been an Open Education Ambassador for USNH since 2016.

I guess we’ll see what happens here, won’t we? :slight_smile:

@steve.covello Hi Steve, welcome to the Rebus Community! It’s been great to hear how you’ve been using Pressbooks to create open textbooks – thank you so much for sharing . We’d love to hear more about the work you’ve been doing as the Open Ed Ambassador for USNH.

@apurva The title of “Ambassador” is simply acting as both an explainer of Open Ed and an advocate - all while continuing my own understandings of what Open Ed can be and how it is interpreted by educators (both faculty and administrators). Since I am one of the frontline instructional designers here at GSC, I am able to bring up the topic with faculty and program directors within the normal course readiness cycles and new faculty on-boarding.

Each instance where I bring up the possibilities for an OER or Open Ped integration into an online course discussion, the responses are always positive, though the logistics, planning, and effort required to pull these ideas off into reality is often the barrier to actually producing something.

@steve.covello Thanks for explaining. It’s good to hear that response to possible user/creation of OER or integration of Open Ped methods into courses is positive – getting faculty on board is often the biggest challenge. As to the barrier you’ve identified, Rebus is in the process of putting together resources and software to help faculty to plan these projects and solicit collaborators from the community to help action it. Stay tuned!

@apurva Would you please explain what you mean by “resources and software”? What gap/need is being filled here?

@steve.covello Sure! My colleague Zoe recently conducted a demo of the software during Open Ed week, and you can see the recap in full here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdQWEHqFRxw. We’re also going to be speaking about the software in our upcoming Office Hours session, and it would be great if you could attend.

@apurva Without having to watch all 27 minutes of the video, can you tell me what gap or need is being filled by the software? Is the software PressBooks or some other tool?

Hi @steve-covello

Rebus Community is focused on supporting open textbook creation through a collaboration/workflow platform & community.

The Rebus Community software will be a platform to facilitate editorial workflow and collaboration. You can think of our upcoming Projects software as replacing the role of a closed / commercial publisher.

Pressbooks is a book formatting platform. You can think of it as an alternative to software such as InDesign.

Rebus Community does use Pressbooks in its workflow for formatting open textbooks. Pressbooks’ many export formats and cloning capability enable members of the open textbook ecosystem to use all the permissions inherent in the open licenses we use at Rebus.