This document provides an overview of using Pressbooks to work with openly licensed educational content. It begins with defining open educational resources and discussing their benefits. It then introduces Pressbooks as an online publishing platform built on WordPress that allows editing and publishing books. Examples are given of how Pressbooks is being used at UW-Madison, including replacing textbooks, language learning materials, public domain anthologies, and student projects. The document concludes with a demo of how to find and import open content for use in Pressbooks.

1. Find, Import, Clone, & Remix
Using Pressbooks to Work with Openly Licensed Content
Steel Wagstaff, Instructional Technology Consultant, UW-Madison
UW-Madison Pressbooks Users Group
Madison | December 14th

2. OUTLINE
Slides posted to Twitter: @SteelWagstaff
1. What are Open Educational
Resources?
2. What is Pressbooks?
3. Sample uses @ UW-Madison
4. User Story: Rachel Bain [Chem]
5. Demo: finding & importing open
content

3. 1. What are Open Educational
Resources [OERs]?

4. 98%
% of courses which require a textbook or other material.
Source: “Opening the Textbook,” Babson Survey Research Group, July 2016

5. Textbook Price Trends
Since 1967, the price of textbooks
has increased 2.81 times faster than
the rate of all consumer goods (i.e.
inflation). Price increases have
accelerated in recent years.
From January 2006 to July 2016:
“consumer prices for college
textbooks increased 88 percent …
compared with an increase of 21
percent for all items”
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics’ TED blog.
Yellow line = college textbooks;
blue line = college tuition and fees;
black line = all items [general inflation trend]

6. Textbook vs Recreational Book Trends
Textbooks are now ~300% more
expensive than they were in 1997;
recreational books are 4% less expensive.
At left: consumer price index trend lines from 1997-
present for ‘educational books & supplies’ [top] and
‘recreational books’ [bottom]. Charts supplied by the
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

7. #TextbookBroke
The College Board advises students to budget $1,298 annually for books & materials.
However, the National Association of College Stores (NACS) says the average college
student spends around $579 a year on textbooks. Similarly, Michael Feldstein estimates
that students spend around $600 / year on textbooks.
How to explain the difference?
● Students don’t buy required textbooks (perhaps as many as ⅔)
● Students don’t buy the current edition
● Students take fewer courses (perhaps as many as ½ of all students)

8. Open Educational Resources (OERs) are teaching,
learning, and research resources released under an
open license that permits their free use and
repurposing by others.
OERs can be textbooks, full courses, lesson plans,
videos, tests, software, or any other tool, material,
or technique that supports access to knowledge.
Source: SPARC

9. The 5Rs of
Open Content
— from David Wiley
OPEN = FREE + PERMISSIONS
1. Retain
2. Reuse
3. Revise
4. Remix
5. Redistribute

10. Creative Commons Licenses
Source: http://foter.com/blog/how-to-
attribute-creative-commons-photos/
See also UBC’s Creative Commons guide:
https://copyright.ubc.ca/guidelines-and-
resources/support-guides/creative-commons/

11. Why Open?
1. Impact on learning. Large studies
consistently find learning outcomes
stay the same or increase.
2. Educators can curate, tailor, and
share OERs to suit their curriculum,
and share their innovations freely.
3. Students have ‘Day 1’ access and can
customize their learning to better
meet their needs.
4. Students save $ on textbooks.

12. 34.3%
Percentage of faculty reporting that they were “aware” of Open Textbooks in 2016.
15.2% — “somewhat aware” | 12.2% — “aware” | 6.9% — “very aware”
Source: “Opening the Textbook,” Babson Survey Research Group, July 2016

13. 5.3%
% of courses currently using an openly licensed (CC or public domain) required textbook.
Source: “Opening the Textbook,” Babson Survey Research Group, July 2016

14. 2. What is Pressbooks?

15. Pressbooks is “an online book publishing
platform that makes it easy to generate
clean, well-formatted books in multiple
outputs. PressBooks is built on
WordPress and is open source.”
— Hugh McGuire, Pressbooks founder

16. Significant Features
● UW-Madison’s production instance has
been hosted by Unizin since August 2016.
● Each PB instance is a centrally-managed
network (built on WordPress multisite)
which can contain a huge number of
separate “books” [two examples at right]
● Each “book” has a unique web address.
Books on the same network can have
different structures, themes/appearances,
copyright licenses, & permissions.
UW-Madison
Pressbooks
Lumen Learning
Pressbooks

17. What is a Pressbook?
All published books exist as standalone
web texts featuring landing page with:
1. descriptive metadata
2. cover image
3. table of contents
4. download options
5. licensing information [not shown]
2
1
3
4
Portuguese language textbook published at UW-Madison

18. Using Pressbooks
TOP RIGHT: Pressbooks uses a standard
WordPress visual/text HTML editor.
Editing text & inserting media is as easy
as using a word processor. Many
collaborators can work on the same
book with different roles & permissions.
BOTTOM RIGHT: Pressbooks features a
drag-and-drop chapter organization
interface. Lets you create front & back
matter, as well as two-level ‘part’ &
‘chapter’ organization for main content.

19. Interactive Content
via H5P plugin

20. Four examples of H5P activities in Pressbooks:
1. True/False type question set, 2. Fill in the blank activity,
3. Find multiple hotspots, 5. Interactive video (with drag & drop)
1
2 4
3

21. Collaborative
Annotation
via Hypothesis plugin

22. At left: Pressbooks page
with H5P activity and
rich annotations
1. Multi-part quiz
[H5P]
2. Image in
annotation layer
3. Video in annotation
4. Annotation with
external link
5. Embedded audio in
annotation
6. Edit, delete, reply,
share buttons for
each annotation
1
2
3
4
5 6

23. Integrating with Canvas
via Thin Common Cartridge and LTI plugins

24. Import into Canvas
TOP RIGHT: We can export books as
Thin Common Cartridges and import
them into Canvas via a simple 2-step
process. This creates discrete links in
Canvas for each of the book’s chapters.
BOTTOM RIGHT: When a student clicks
a link, the content loads as though it were
native to Canvas.
We will discuss integrating Pressbooks with
Canvas in more detail at a user’s group

25. Sample Interactive Reading Activity
1
A Pressbook used in a
French lit course in
Canvas this semester:
1. Annotated text
(yellow highlights)
2. Glossary term (blue
link w/ tooltip)
3. Audio & video
4. Annotation layer
(uses Hypothes.is)
5. H5P activity in
annotation pane3
4
5
2

26. 3. Sample Use Cases @
UW-Madison

27. USES for
PRESSBOOKS
What UW-Madison users are currently
doing with Pressbooks
1. Course material to replace or
supplement $$$ texts
2. Educational materials for
language learning, outreach or
distance/extension
3. Anthologies/course readers of
public domain material
4. Student-authored projects

28. Course material to replace
or supplement $$$ texts

29. Anatomy Textbook Projects
A team of instructors (Elise Davis, Karen
Krabbenhoft, Meghan Cotter, Sarah Traynor) in the
School of Medicine and Public Health are
publishing a series of interactive anatomy
textbooks for medical students training to be
doctors, nurses, and physician assistants.
● Includes detailed anatomical images, gifs, and
videos (to demonstrate range of motion)
● Many self-grading “knowledge check” quizzes
Sample image from the “Skin” chapter of one
of the anatomy books in production.

30. Materials for language
learning, training, outreach
and/or distance learning

31. Português para principiantes
An online edition of Claude E. Leroy’s Português
Para Principiantes, a Brazilian Portuguese language
textbook first published by UW Extension in 1964
and last revised in 1993.
● Used by hundreds of students this past year
● Includes 30+ lessons, 30 audio dialogues,
pronunciation by native speakers for >1000
vocab words, cultural and literary ‘spotlights’
● >100 interactive assessments with real-time
Cover design by Steel Wagstaff. All
images used under CC BY licenses.

32. Anthologies/course readers
of public domain material

33. Public Domain Anthologies / Course Readers
John Zumbrunnen (chair, Political
Science) is publishing anthologies for
undergrad & grad seminars made with
excerpts from primary texts in the
public domain.
● John invites students to annotate and
contribute to a shared understanding
of assigned texts.
● AT RIGHT: Images from Introduction to
Political Thought and Political Theory of
the American Revolution, two readers
produced in the last year.

34. Student Authored Projects

35. Creators, Collectors & Communities
Ann Smart Martin (Art History) led a group
of students over two semesters in making a
catalogue and eBook to accompany the
inaugural exhibit of a new historical
museum in Mount Horeb.
● Includes images, descriptions of 50
objects, audio (oral histories) and other
multimedia
● Also features detailed object studies
(research papers written by students)

36. 4. User Story: Rachel
Bain [Chemistry]

37. Chemistry OpenStax Adoption
Chemistry department is redesigning curriculum
with focus on more active learning in introductory,
‘large lecture’ courses. Currently using Pressbooks
to revise/adapt the OpenStax Chemistry textbook.
OpenStax Chemistry text in Pressbooks

38. 5. Demo: Finding &
Importing Open Content

39. What Exists for My Discipline?
High-quality OER are abundant, but can be hard to find. The best place to start:
● The Mason ER Metafinder, a meta-search engine built by Wally Grotophorst.
This tool simultaneously searches several large OER libraries, including:
1. Open Textbook Library maintained by University of Minnesota.
2. The OpenStax CNX project out of Rice University.
3. OpenED textbooks, maintained by BCcampus.
4. California’s Merlot II repository.
5. The OER Commons

40. ‘I Found Something I Want, Now What?’, Part 1
If it’s already in a public Pressbooks
instance (like BCcampus), just clone it!
1. Select ‘clone a book’ option under
‘My Catalog’
2. Enter the URL of the source book
3. Enter the URL you want the book to
be cloned to
4. Click ‘Clone it!’
Watch a demo video

41. Public Domain Books
Many university courses focus on material that is in the public domain (published
before 1923) or published under permissive licenses (i.e. government documents).
You may consider building your own anthology or reader based on texts already
included in Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, LibreTexts,
Feedbooks, Open Culture, or Google Books. Much of the content found in these
repositories can be imported into Pressbooks & edited or remixed. If you want help
finding public domain content or have questions about copyright and fair use, ask a
librarian!
At left: To search Google books for free eBooks on your
topic, enter a search term [e.g. ‘Chaucer’] and select the
‘Books’ tab. If you select the ‘Tools’ option, several
additional filters will appear. The first of these is a drop
down menu which can filter for ‘Free Google eBooks.’

42. ‘I Found Something I Want, Now What?’, Part 2
If it’s not already in Pressbooks, but you
can get it in WXR, EPUB, ODT, DOCX,
or HTML format, you can import it.
1. Create a book: ‘Add a New Book’.
2. Click ‘Import’ from the dashboard
3. Select the file type, upload the file
and follow the instructions.
Demo: Project Gutenberg ePUB import
Note: There is a special import tool for
OpenStax books. Contact Steel for help.

43. Questions?email: swagstaff@wisc.edu

44. Future Topics of
Interest?