Rethinking and recasting the textbook with open educational practices :async:

OE Global 2021 Asynchronous Interactive Activities
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Michelle Harrison (Thompson Rivers University), Tannis Morgan (Vancouver Community College), Irwin Devries (Thompson Rivers University), Michael Paskevicius (University of Victoria)

The UNESCO recommendation of “encouraging effective, inclusive and equitable access to quality OER” signals an evolution of the OER movement to more explicitly and conscientiously consider both epistemic and representational justice. The broader movement towards open education, including open educational resources (OER), open educational practice (OEP), open-source, and open access, has provided us with new ways of designing learning experiences in higher education, but at the same time has been mapped onto many of our existing legacy artefacts and systems, such as textbooks, design processes, and traditional course publishing models. As learning design professionals and faculty strive to adopt OEP, including more collaborative and open ways of sharing, there is recognition that many of the traditional tools and spaces that shape our educational systems will not meet these pedagogical and epistemological shifts. The traditional textbook form can lack the interactivity, agency, and accessibility needed to enable spaces that honour multiple voices and perspectives, co-create knowledge and challenge traditional roles and hierarchies supported in open pedagogical approaches. For this project, we have adopted a critical lens to investigate educators' understanding of both traditional and alternative textbook forms, and examine how critical instructional design and open pedagogy may call for a rethinking. In addition, we are hoping to build a model for an “untextbook” that aims to include multiple perspectives and participatory architectures that allow for diverse voices and knowledge co-creation. A prototype platform is under development that is focused on inviting/honouring multiple voices and decentering and co-constructing knowledge. In this interactive workshop we invite participants to become active contributors to this open platform and resource development, by engaging with the current platform/resource, contributing voices/ideas and providing feedback on the experience and model in an active discussion activity.

Extended abstract: OE_Global_2021_paper_126.pdf 📄

Activity Details

UNESCO OER Action Area: Inclusive and equitable OER
Format: Asynchronous Interactive Activity
Language: English

Participate

This activity can be completed at any time during (or after) the conference.

Instructions and materials for the activity will be added below by the authors. They will provide specific details on how to participate and what to share back as a response to the activity.

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Hi everyone! We are four learning designers based in British Columbia, Canada. We acknowledge this land out of respect for the Indigenous nations who have cared for it, from before the arrival of settler peoples until this day.

In the past few years, in the context of our broader project we have been rethinking and recasting the open textbook, challenging traditional (and open) teaching and learning resources, and considering the impact of openness on learning design.

We invite you to engage below with any or all of the following questions. Please indicate the number(s) of the question(s) you’re responding to:

  1. What are the key questions that learning designers need to consider, in light of open educational practices, post-pandemic pedagogy, and social justice pedagogy, going forward?
  2. What ideas and practices from traditional learning design do we need to revisit and rethink?
  3. What contributions would you imagine as part of a teaching and learning resource on learning design in light of open education?

If you would like, you can respond via audio using the Vocaroo service. Simply hit the red record button, capture your audio, hit save and share, then post the audio link in a reply below. We would love to hear from you! Thanks to @cogdog for the tip!

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For me, critical learning design is about challenging our assumptions about instructional design processes, the teaching and learning environments that we build, and the artefacts that we’ve come to expect in a teaching and learning experience. What are the practices that need to be challenged ? What aspects are timeless, and what aspects no longer make sense when we embrace openness? How can we challenge these things in an inclusive and participatory way?

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Applying a learning design to education essentially generates an educational course or resource suitable for the masses. This “standardizing” of learning is often done so we can pump as many learners through as possible. Learning design as a form of efficiency. However, applying a learning design in advance prevents learners from controlling the design of their own learning and makes them passive consumers. It amazes me how little we teach learners about how learning works and how little control we give them in terms of designing their own learning. I think an untextbook ought to let learners choose and sequence their own materials and learning activities in ways that are optimized for them. But to do that well they need to know some of the underlying principles of how learning works and how to design learning effectively. In this context I suggest open practices be thought of as not just for educators but for students too. In this light open practices entails opening up and revealing the inner workings of how learning works to learners themselves so that they have some agency over their own learning.

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Much instructional design today is embedded in thought structures and processes of an earlier era. Too often we remain bound up in a project management mindset and an instructional development process focused on highly predetermined learning activities and outcomes in a world that demands creativity and critical insight. In addition, many of the resources available to instructors and students in instructional design are based on traditional course structures and set faculty and learner roles. My hope is to be part of the development of a living resource for instructors, students and practitioners that both explores and models alternative approaches to instructional/learning design, in the form of an untextbook. The term “untextbook” is a placeholder for an open, creative, community-developed and -maintained resource that advances theory and practice in critical instructional/learning design.

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I think it is worthwhile to revisit the past 50 years of literature on open education and information literacy. I had read Breivik and Gee’s 1989 book, Information literacy : revolution in the library (Information literacy : revolution in the library : Breivik, Patricia Senn : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive) a few years ago, and was impressed with the way their conceptualization of information literacy aligns with open education. They point to a long history of criticisms of teaching practices that could be described as “closed,” practices based on instructor-determined content (lectures, reserves and textbooks) at the expense of student research and student-initiated questions. Given the abundance and accessibility of information, perhaps what is needed is less textbook content and more guiderails and supports.

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HI Paul,

Thanks so much for sharing this resource. Your point about providing more “guardrails” and supports is such a good one. In one of our workshops sessions one of our contributors shared the idea of a “foraging” literacy, where we help students become foragers. She pointed out that to forage well you need supports and knowledge, but once you have that knowledge (like which mushrooms not to pick :)) you can use it to go out and then start your own pathways and searches. I was in a session yesterday where @josielm was talking about considering learning design through the metaphor of desire lines - considering how we design courses with the idea that there needs to be space to allow for these different pathways. I think that is always a challenge in our digital spaces - how to make them more permeable.

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I believe that openness can provide a stimulus for innovation in teaching and learning. Certainly in my practice, it has changed the way I design my pedagogical approaches, strategies, resources, and assessment methods, and perhaps most importantly, how I interact with students. Open resources and technologies can be used to support and enable active learning experiences, by presenting and sharing learners’ work in real-time, allowing for formative feedback, peer-review, encouraging learner contributions, and ultimately, promoting community-engaged coursework. I joined this project to explore how critical instructional design might be used to rethink course resources and design methods, and further the maturation of instructional design in light of open educational practices.

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(Yes, Discourse, I want to revive this thread. I realize it’s been a while. They said it was fine to engage in the activity after the fact!)

Picking this one:

The one which brought me here, months after this question was posted, is the idea of a “textbook”. Back in May 2007, revisiting this idea was a significant part of my more formal entry to the OE field.
Simply put, I find textbook-based teaching deeply unsatisfying.

As a Francophone, I didn’t encounter many textbooks as a learner. The two I remember are from an introduction to cultural anthropology course during my first year of university and, quite surprisingly, a folkore seminar I took as part of my PhD coursework! To make matters worse, the instructor in that seminar gave us weekly assignments which involved copying down definitions from that very same textbook.
Sheesh!

So, what do I find unsatisfying about textbooks? Quite a few things. Here are some hints…

Perhaps (in)famously, most textbooks contain parts that we don’t find useful. It may be a full chapter that we decide to skip or even just an array of misleading statements. A core notion of OER discourse and conversation is that we can focus on content we find relevant and skip or modify the others. Which requires quite a bit of work.
Relatedly, textbooks are typically written in a consistent voice, even when they’re co-authored. While that may sound like a benefit from an editorial perspective, it transforms the course into something of a “unidirectional dialogue”. That one voice becomes loud enough to drown out learners’ voices or even that of the teacher. Not conducive to full conversations. Particularly important in HigherEd where critical thinking is so distinctive. (My guess is that it might matter in primary and secondary education as well. However, I’ve only taught in nine universities and been working with Quebec’s college network. So I don’t really know how that would play out from firsthand experience.)
The fact that the editorial voice of most textbooks is strongly “didactic” merely compounds the problem.
There are “polyvocal” textbooks. My recent «coup de cœur» (“editor’s pick”?) is Learning to be Human Together – Simple Book Publishing (pressbooks.pub). You can really hear the diverse voices. Were I to teach with it, I feel like I could avoid the “monologue effect”. Thing is, that publication is quite different from the “idea of textbook” that people might have in mind.

Funnily enough, during that May 2007 session, I did mention a textbook that I actually used the following semester. It’s the only textbook I’ve enjoyed, in my teaching practice. Thinking Like an Anthropologist by John A. Omohundro, published (only once!) by McGraw-Hill (!). The ancillary materials are still online. In terms of format, it was a pretty standard textbook. Of course, having been published by a mainstream commercial publisher, nothing about it was “open” in any way. What made it special was the approach taken. So, maybe, the content of some other textbooks could make me forget about my dissatisfaction with textbooks. At the same time, even with Omohundro’s book, I would rather have had something more “granular”. I’d have preferred a collection of resources based on this approach that I could have rearranged and adapted. In fact, I once asked the author if he might consider publishing something in the open. He didn’t sound that intrigued by the prospect, at the time. Maybe now that he’s emeritus…

All this to say: I still have an issue with textbooks. Even open ones!
I know, I know. I shouldn’t say this. It’s just that I prefer to be frank.

Part of the rethinking of this textbook idea could draw inspiration from the long history of book genres, types, and formats. Including nonlinear texts like Choose Your Own Adventure and some of the early forms of metafiction.

Much simpler to create: a coursepack.
It’s been my preferred “content format” through most of my teaching practice. Sure, it takes some time to put together. Much more effort than clicking a button on a publisher’s website. In my case, though, that effort is a large part of my course prep. And I’ve done it under time constraints enough times (with only a week or two to prepare for a semester-long course) that it doesn’t take me that many hours.

More recently, I’ve adopted an unusual strategy, which requires a lot more effort and provides me with much more flexibility: curating texts every week, based on the needs of collaborative learning. Pairs well with the collaborative syllabus.
I realize that’s rather radical. And I can’t say it’s been consistently effective in terms of learners’ expectations. Still, it’s worked well with my approaches to Open Pedagogy.
I’ve also tried to get learners involved in co-creating material as a group, with mixed outcomes.

So, all this about one LD idea to rethink.

Some of the others (maybe as placeholders): moving from ADDIE to LXD (Learning Experience Design), connecting with L&D (Learning & Development), community learning without required material, public conversations as a modality for deep learning…

There’s plenty more where this came from. :wink:

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Thanks for kicking the light on on this thread, which I may not have any seen before.

I wonder if this has some bearing on encapsulating something like “the textbook” as a single entity that we can talk about uniformly. My gut agrees that we have seen a whole lot of emphasis on open textbooks to the point that some use it interchangeably with OER, and often there is no question of the “textbook” side of the word.

I’ve taught only a smattering of courses over the last X years, but I have never used a textbook. Maybe it’s because my topics have been media, networks, technology, storytelling, but all my teaching has been done with readings, watchings all available on the pen web.

At the same time I have a personal attachment to a textbook still on my shelf. It literally changed my career trajectory. Yes a textbook. It’s available for much less than i paid for it. If that mattered.

textbook cover, Earth by Frank Press and Raymond Siever, Third Edition
textbook cover, Earth by Frank Press and Raymond Siever, Third Edition1200×900 73.7 KB

In 1983, my second year of university, I got panicked by a future in my first major of computer science, so to explore my options, I took an introductory geology class. Between Dr Wehmiller’s lectures (yes lectures) and a textbook I read cover to cover, I fell in love with this field, changed my major, finished a BS and MS, and oddly enough later came back to computer tech).

But I can say for sure, this textbook was pivotal in that corner turn Or maybe not, maybe it was me. But it made a difference.

So can we lump all textbooks ad experiences in together and judge them? I struggle with that.

You think you have more here this came from, hah!

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As do I. Maybe I was clumsy. I didn’t mean to dismiss the idea of a textbook. It’s just that it affords a rethink. I find it problematic. I do dislike textbooks as a category. Which doesn’t mean that I lump them all together. (After all, I did single out “On Human Learn” as a polyvocal textbook and I did enjoy Thinking Like an Anthropologist.)

It’s more about trying to redefine textbooks for our work in Open Pedagogy.

Which can lead us back to:
What is a “Book”? - OEG Plaza - OE Global Connect

Of course, I didn’t mention some of the perceived advantages of textbooks, as they’re commonly represented. Standardization is a big topic.
I do find it alluring, in this case. What if everyone using the same textbook were able to work together? Sharing about their experiences (“this chapter proved difficult to teach”). Exchanging work done based on the material. Build knowledge bases. Consciously track learning data about ways textbook material and learning activities work together. Enabling collaborative learning across languages… I was musing about these things when I was using textbooks, and had discussions about those with publisher reps.

Since then, publishers have done some attempts at providing this kind of value to their readership. Haven’t heard much about these attempts that I find encouraging. It’s much more about publishers gaining data on learners’ behaviour than on building learning communities from the use of textbooks.
I’m sure there are textbooks which have everything needed, in terms of community support. Can’t think of any. Possibly in contexts where learners and teachers had to get together to create material, as has been the case with Digging into Canadian Soils.
Facilitating community action is tough work. Most publishers probably haven’t built strong competencies to help that work. Yet I keep thinking there’s potential, here.

It’s almost like the trend of fans supporting artists. Are we ready for a Patreon-like service in HigherEd? (I’m sure there are EdTech companies trying just that. What I mean is: can our scene benefit from “friends, fans, and followers”?)
How would our models need to be different for everything to work? (Please, oh please, don’t say it has to do with cryptocurrency!)

Back to “textbook” as a format, genre, booktype…
I’d like something modular. And some textbooks are somewhat modular, including a few from commercial publishers. The challenge, there, would be to maintain a connection between modules. If I want worldwide learning communities to coalesce around specific collections of resources, how could that work if people don’t use the same resources?
We “just” have to link those resources together! Linked Open Data, baby!
Ok, I realize it’s not that simple. Still, it sounds like one of those challenges which can have a straightforward solution as long as we define the problem and put our heads together to ideate, select, prototype, etc.

Gee! Who was it who mentioned Github, the other day? :thinking:

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Speaking of both nonlinearity and Github…
pmartinolli/TTTTRPG: Timeline Tree of Tabletop Role-Playing Games, celebrating more than 40 years game design innovations (github.com)

(As a disclaimer: Martinolli, a librarian at UdeM, has been part of our OER leaders network and, as I just found out, got my librarian lifepartner interested in applications of boardgames in learning.)

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Woah, Neo, thanks for sharing Pascal’s work… I am not as much into the Table Top Games as the extent to which he has documented research, and especially on making use of Wikidata for his projects

(Wikidata is on my to be done sometime soon learning list)

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Good point about Wikidata. I’ve also been keeping it in some of my lists. There are plenty of Wikipedians in OE, often with strong links to those other parts of the Wiki Way.
Part of what’s neat, there, has to do with the advantages of Linked Open Data (LOD), as I mentioned previously. There’s a whole lot to be done with LOD in OERs, specifically. @Jennryn and @cable probably know some people who might be working on LOD for OER.

At any rate, back to Martinolli’s work. (We got CC-certified together, as part of a cohort with @Jennryn and Shanna.)

Just had a chat with Pascal, this morning. Now that my personal life leads me to a deeper involvement with games (board, video, etc.), I’m getting ideas.
At this point, I’m venturing into an exploration of “what games might mean for Open Education”. And there are interesting threads, there. Pascal was telling me about his gaming experience impacting his approach to training sessions. As he says, mainstream courses in pedagogy tend to be analytical, missing a human element. From RPGs, especially as a Gamemaster, he derives an approach to hosting, which has a lot to do with “invitation rituals”: why are we here and what’s likely to happen?

Also connected to the OER scene: quickly prototyping games with pen and paper (or with H5P). Sure, we can prototype just about anything. The advantage with games is that there are some straightforward approaches towards co-creation. Some years back, I’ve had the opportunity to go through a neat learning experience with Affordance Studio, an indie videogame maker part of Montreal’s “Indie Asylum”. The learning experience itself, called GameStorm, took the form of a workshop during which we co-created a game using a simple board game. They’ve prototyped an online version here:
Gamestorm (affordancestudio.com)
At some level, it might sound simple enough. What made a big difference in the workshop is how they facilitated the experience. The facilitation itself wasn’t high touch. It was just effective, thoughtful, contextualized.
(Yes, we should be able to create something similar in H5P, especially with help from @otacke or @yasin.dahi )

At any rate… There’s something about textbooks which makes this kind of approach less prominent. It’s not that textbooks can’t accommodate this open-ended work. It’s more that the focus on textbooks distracts us from the “convening”.

Ultimately, if we design textbooks based on readymade Learning Objectives, we’re having a hard time grasping what learners’ objectives might be.

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Well, if time allows … :watch:

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Thanks for this stream of ideas, Alex, and I’m keying in first on the approach of convening and having rituals of invitation.

The Gamestorm planning process you shared is lovely, but also when you describe i as

What made a big difference in the workshop is how they facilitated the experience. The facilitation itself wasn’t high touch. It was just effective, thoughtful, contextualized.

suggests that the effectiveness too is more the way it was “played” rather then the elegance of the multisided dice

Textbooks though are not really the educational experience anymore than windows and doors, while functional part of my house, are not what makes it a home.

We would welcome some kind of convening here maybe in the next months to have more discussion/brainstorming amongst those interested in how to incorporate these elements of RPGs into open educational practice, are you “game”?

I note as well that this entire discussion emerged from a session at the 2021 conference, and this bit of emergent surprise has a bit of a game-like essence to me.

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Sure am!

There’s a lot of potential for meaningful collaboration leading to deepened learning experiences.

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Leaving a link here for later reading :wink:

While much of modern, bureaucratised society is geared toward reducing uncertainty, games are strange pockets of social life designed to heighten it—much to the attraction of players and spectators entering these pockets (Malaby, 2003; Costykian, 2013). This crucially includes uncertain success . Several scholars like Caillois (2001, p. 7) went so far as to define games and play as ‘uncertain activity. Doubt must remain until the end…. An outcome known in advance, with no possibility of error or surprise, … is incompatible with the nature of play’

“An outcome known in advance” describes most courses…

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Exactly!
It’s a large part of where Open Pedagogy can be distinctive. Somewhat incompatible with the strictest forms of “bean counting”. Still not too difficult to combine with a careful approach to uncertainty.

In other words, what if courses were like unconferences?