Presentation slide for Open Textbook Summit, April 16-17, 2014 by: Takashi Sato Dept. of Physics Presented at Open Textbook Summit

1. The Ideal Textbook
Does Not Exist
Takashi Sato
Dept. of Physics
Presented at Open Textbook Summit
Vancouver, April 16, 2014

2. Status: 2012
• Always shared educational resources
• Didn’t know they were called “OER”
• Sharing wasn’t always well organized
• There are lots of OER
• not many are well developed into textbook form.
• Many OER have author’s style built in
• they don’t always work for others
*OER – Open Educational Resources

3. How I got started/involved with
Opentextbooks
• Exposed to a small selection of physics books (Feb 2013)
• One stood out, free does not mean cheap
• Adopt as pilot* (Sept 2013)
• Learned to adapt (Nov 2013)
• mostly by deleting chapters and sections
• Print-on-demand custom edition (Dec 2013)
• Happy – students, instructor, colleagues…
*It was never our intent that students should have to pay ~$200 for each book

4. Original Adapted for KPU PHYS 1100
Urone, Hinrichs, Dirks & Sharma
College Physics, Openstax College

5. Purpose of a Textbook
(faculty perspective)
All of us could be textbook authors
but
many of us choose to dedicate our teaching efforts in other ways.

6. In an Ideal World….
• I pick a textbook off the shelf
• It matches the course content and my teaching style
• I use it, students use it
• Done!
• Money & payment are minor afterthoughts
All the educational resources pre-existed as a package (the
textbook) and I didn’t have to create or assemble them.
In the real world, these idealizations are challenged from many directions

7. The Perfect Book Does Not Exist
• We can keep searching for the perfect book, or
• We can write our own, or
• We can accept and embrace what exists, and
• We can produce supplements
Edition changes are annoying and require time & effort on my part

8. Status Today
• With OER, we can make edits
• closer match to my course’s needs
• ebooks – reasonable to ask students to bring to class
• I control the revisions/editions

9. Conclusion
• I can have a book that serves the course and student needs
more closely than I would have traditionally
• but without writing my own book from scratch
• The ultimate point is not to spend time at it

10. Check out “my” textbook at
http://www.kpu.ca/physics/sato/PHYS1100