Open Textbook Initiative

First-year college communications course open textbook: Effective Workplace Communication

This collaborative project involves adapting an existing American university-oriented open textbook, Business Communication for Success, into an AODA-compliant Canadian college-oriented open textbook, Effective Workplace Communication.

By meeting the required learning outcomes for all first-year communications courses throughout Algonquin College’s various academic areas, the open textbook will meet both students’ and English instructors’ basic instructional resource needs, as well as those of other Canadian colleges, in a manner that allows for the adaptation and addition of program-specific content. With a greater focus on Canadian workplace contexts in the assessment resources it also makes available, Effective Workplace Communication will be more relatable to students in vocational programs than its predecessor.

Multi-Meters 101, Basic Operation, Care and Maintenance and Advanced Troubleshooting for the Skilled Trades

The vast majority of skilled trades use multi-meters on a daily basis. This open textbook project will focus on the many uses of this tool and how it relates to students future day-to-day careers. From basic operation and maintenance to advanced troubleshooting techniques, this open textbook will cover it all, giving students a well rounded knowledge of multi-meter usage.

Professional Indigenous Cooking: A Canadian Perspective

The proposed open textbook will introduce learners to traditional food- and cooking-related practices from Indigenous groups across Canada. Divided into three main sections (The People, The Tools, and The Food), students will learn about the history, diets, tools, and methods of Indigenous peoples from a pan-Indigenous perspective, as well as develop skills to support their careers as professional cooks.

Student cooks will be introduced to traditional recipes passed down from Elders, tribes, and family members while learning about traditional preparation practices as per Canadian region, local culture, customs, spirituality and celebration.

The proposed textbook will provide a comprehensive learning resource that can be applied to a fifteen week Indigenous-centric cooking program; or be used, in whole or in part, as a reference in other applied cooking programs.

Planetary Science

This project involves the creation of ancillary resources for the open textbook, Planetary Science.

Foundational Physics

This project involves an adaptation of College Physics textbook, second edition, by Urone, Hinrichs, Dirks, and Sharma, published by OpenStax (Rice University). It will also include additional ancillary resources to be used in the open-source online homework system, WeBWorK.

Open textbook adaptation and enhancement for MATH 1800 (Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning) at Carleton University

This project aims to adapt the open textbook, A Gentle Introduction to the Art of Mathematics by Joseph Fields, by adding an additional chapter and converting the original source files into granular R Markdown files for the authoring tool Bookdown. After the conversion, the workflow for remixing the textbook material will be streamlined and the textbook will become fully accessible and AODA compliant.

Indigenous Studies: First Peoples’ Stories in Canada digital textbook

The Indigenous Studies program contributed to Centennial College being awarded the 2016 CICan Gold Medal Award for Excellence in Indigenous Education. To date, the courses within this program have not used a textbook; rather, the Centennial ream has gathered several political, spiritual, and community leaders to discuss current issues in an open and honest forum. With this proposal, the Centennial team seeks to create a digital textbook with video, audio, interactive maps and print materials enriched with the stories told by Elders, Traditional Teachers, Grandmothers, and Grandfathers, allowing students to listen or watch stories told in both traditional languages and in English.

Indigenous Peoples and Natural Resources

This open textbook will provide an overview of Indigenous Peoples and natural resources. Topics covered will include the following:

• Historical and modern-day treaties and their impacts on natural resource development and management
• What it means to incorporate Aboriginal and treaty rights in natural resource development and management
• Indigenous Peoples’ relationship to forest land and resources
• Natural resource policy developments and practices related to Indigenous issues at international, national, regional, and local levels, with an emphasis on Ontario
• Indigenous Peoples’ relationships with provincial and federal governments and with stakeholder groups such as environmental non-governmental organizations, natural resource industries, and forest-dependent communities.

The Indigenous, historical significance of the lands encompassing the district of Greater Sudbury

This project will be the creation of an open textbook with a two-fold aim: First, through the medicine wheel model, students will learn to identify and recognize the Indigenous, historical significance of the lands encompassing Greater Sudbury. Second, through the use of interactive mapping strategies, the textbook itself will provide educators with a guidebook on how to document Indigenous stories in their own areas.

Essentials of Linguistics

We propose to adapt an Open Educational Resource for a high enrolment first-year course: Introduction to Linguistics. The resource includes video and written content, exercises with solutions, and quizzes covering the core areas of theoretical linguistics (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics), with a focus on Canada, including Canadian English and Indigenous languages of Canada.

Canadian History: Sport

Canadian History: Sport is a modular open textbook modelled upon and linked to two popular Canadian history open texts. It introduces exciting specialized literature on sport to teach history in a way that is interesting, accessible, and unique. It emphasizes sport’s cultural significance and provides historical research on specific topics of concern to our world of sport today. English and French content is modular, easily extracted, and modified for varied uses. Some modules provide Indigenous Studies content that directly responds to items 87-91 of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee Report, providing public education about the national story of Aboriginal athletes, particularly how megasport events today are land treaty rights flashpoints. Created in an interactive digital form, this open textbook connects to existing digitized archives, visual and audio media, and other resources. It is free and users can modify and revise editions for specific classroom use through the open-source platform Pressbooks.

Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation

This proposed project involves adapting segments of three design thinking OER into a single, comprehensive OER textbook suitable for use with graduate and undergraduate design courses and workshops across the disciplines. The resulting adaptation will transform resources originally authored for K-12 educational contexts into a textbook for Ontario post-secondary learners.

Vital Sign Measurement Across the Lifespan

Vital sign measurement is a foundational skill for all students in post-secondary healthcare related programs (e.g., nursing, medicine, paramedics). Two open educational resources (OER) exist that are valuable for our student population because of the accessible and accurate textual information provided related to vital sign measurement. While we promote student uptake of reliable resources, we recognize that the pedagogical approach in these OER is didactic, primarily textual-based, and the platform provides minimal opportunities for learner engagement. Using an innovative and technology-enabled pedagogy, we aim to adapt these existing OER into a more engaging and interactive textbook on vital sign measurement across the lifespan. This teaching-learning approach will provide students opportunity to optimize their competency in vital sign measurement. This textbook will be utilized to support the delivery of two high-enrolment year one and year two courses with over 1,000 students. These courses are delivered across three institutional sites in Ontario and embedded in the Ryerson, Centennial, George Brown Collaborative Nursing Program.

Open-source eBook, Web Design Primer

This proposal seeks to repurpose and adapt a published Apple iBook, Web Design: Primer for a 10 Week Course by Ahmed Sagarwala and Richard Adams. The book includes content on web design, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, video, audio, animation, and images. New content to be added includes chapters on semantics, ebooks, and digital photography. Ancillary materials including chapter quizzes and slide decks will be added. The new book will have a CC-BY 4.0 licence and will be available in multiple open access formats. The adaptation can be used for introductory web design courses, widely taught in colleges and universities across Ontario. The authors will use the book for a new course in web design and there is a commitment to adopt the new book in two other courses at Ryerson.

Seneca Introduction to Accounting open text adaptation

Seneca, Fanshawe, and Lambton Colleges will work in partnership to adopt, adapt, use and promote open textbooks in the business suite of programs offered in the Ontario college system. Each partner will establish an expert team to first identify and adopt an existing open educational resource (OER) to use in high-enrolment first or second-year business program courses. Findings will be reviewed by the partner institutions and promoted and shared system-wide through the Ontario heads of business. While supporting sustainable and innovative learning, the intent of the project is to develop several OER resources that can be shared, while greatly increasing the number of students who have access to accessible learning resources at no cost. The future goal of the project is to expand the OER course offerings to other Ontario colleges through further collaborative development.

Neuroscience – Canadian 1st edition open textbook

The proposed open textbook will address instructional content needs related to rapidly emerging neuroscience concepts for which there are no existing open and adaptable digital textbooks or comprehensive OER collections. Specifically, there is no single set of materials dedicated to nervous system development, neuroplasticity mechanisms underlying modifications of behaviour and the emerging importance of the gut microbiome on the brain. This project will combine materials to provide students with a full course set of open resources in digital textbook format, with no cost incursion. Further, students will have access to recent research advances directly in their digital textbook resources. By integrating and enhancing materials from various existing open sources, particularly journals, and using principles of effective instructional design in the development process, we are confident that the resulting innovation will support both teaching and learning and allow for the first modifiable digital textbook within our discipline that provides the flexibility to mirror the rapid innovations within neuroscience.

An introductory open textbook for Animal Physiology

University of Toronto Mississauga offers a large introductory animal physiology course (BIO202, 480 students). It has been a challenge to recommend a single textbook that students can use effectively in BIO202. Introductory animal physiology chapters are often included in introductory biology textbooks and they cover some physiology topics extremely well. However, many topics that students should explore in more detail in a second-year physiology course are not available in such texts. Therefore, BIO202 students have been using more advanced physiology textbooks. Although these advanced textbooks have an adequate amount of information for some concepts, they also contain many advanced topics that students may be unfamiliar with and that may cause confusion. We would like to combine and adapt available open introductory biology and introductory physiology resources together in an open textbook that would be available for BIO202 students and would be a better match for introductory animal physiology courses.

Open access textbook for French 3760, French-Language Indigenous Literature and Culture in Canada

The proposed open-source French-language textbook, Littérature et culture autochtones du Canada : Guide, will be efficiently developed by a diverse team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous specialists for inclusion in the eCampusOntario Open Textbook Library. The textbook will be the first resource of its kind in Canada aimed at enabling a wide range of students to understand and appreciate French-language Indigenous texts and cultural productions. It will be made up of innovative online modules that will include cultural context, interactive learning exercises and assessments, and tips on Indigenous pedagogy, to accompany required and suggested readings, listening exercises and viewing exercises. A range of competencies will be developed through the completion of each module. The stand-alone modules will be designed and developed for ease of adoption, remixing and revision. This work will be done in solidarity with the Indigenous community, with respect for Indigenous worldviews and a strong focus on self-representation.

Adoption of an open astronomy textbook for two large first-year courses

This proposal is to adopt an existing open astronomy textbook into two large first-year courses that currently use a commercial publisher textbook. The funding would go towards modifying the book to the needs of the instructors as well as developing additional resources that would be freely-licenced.

Adaptation of an Open Educational Resource (OER) for introductory Astronomy courses

This proposal seeks to adapt an existing OER in order to promote inquiry and discovery-based learning for high-enrolment first-year classes, allowing students to more deeply comprehend fundamental concepts and methods used in modern astronomy.

Summarizing, Synthesizing, Argumenting: Academic and Functional Writing – An open digital textbook for advanced university students in French as a second language

This digital textbook will guide advanced French as a Second Language university students in writing academic and functional summaries, syntheses and argumentative texts in their second language. It incorporates a reflective approach, step-by-step tasks, and an English/French comparative approach to text types and genres. It has three overall objectives: Guide students in learning how to write summaries and syntheses in various formats for various purposes; guide them in summarizing/synthesizing effectively in broader argumentative texts; give them tools to diversify the argumentative strategies and patterns they use, both in short, argumentative genres and in longer, more complex texts.The textbook will be fully multimedia-based, with animated (audio/video) texts and graphics, interactive exercises and quizzes, and include an introduction, a preliminary chapter guiding students and teachers on working efficiently with the eBook, six subject chapters, and four appendices (a glossary; a commented bibliography; a guide to using digital writing tools; suggestions for other writing tasks).