The document discusses open textbooks and Wikipedia as a potential source of open educational resources. It notes that while textbooks have long been used in education, they require significant time and resources to produce. Wikipedia offers a tool called Book Creator that allows articles to be compiled into a single open textbook. This makes Wikipedia a large repository of potential open learning objects that can be easily adapted into open textbooks. However, some argue that disparate Wikipedia articles may not flow well together, but the document counters that within subject areas articles are often written cohesively and take a neutral point of view.

1. New World University
http://newworld.ac
Steve Foerster and Vincent Kizza
Open Textbook Summit 2017
25 May 2017

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http://newworld.ac
 Long been used by students from primary
school to doctoral study
 Despite predictions, not obsolete in the
information age
 Bound textbooks can now be found online,
both in largely unchanged format and with
adaptations

3. New World University
http://newworld.ac
 Free and Open have come to mean different
things to different people
 Free can mean merely costless, or beyond
that can mean unencumbered
 ND isn’t considered open, people disagree
whether NC should be considered open
 Some closed educational resources are
costless for students to have, but OERs are
both

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 Wikipedia articles are open because they’re
released under an Attribution-ShareAlike
license
 This makes many of them potentially useful
as learning objects, and thus Wikipedia is a
sort of giant OER repository

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http://newworld.ac
 Textbooks require significant investment of
time and effort
 Academics often lack systemic incentive to
produce or adapt open textbooks
 Commercial publishers have the advantage of
high revenue from sales
 Some initiatives have risen to the challenge

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http://newworld.ac
 Wikipedia offers a tool called Book Creator
 Use this tool to add articles, singly or by
category, into a single work
 Books can be downloaded as PDF or ODF, and
bound physical copies can be ordered
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Books

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 You can now see Book Creator on all pages

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 Name
Book
 Sort
Chapters
 Order a
Copy
 Download
 Save

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 PDF for easy
redistribution
(shown)
 ODF for editing
 Bound copy can
be ordered

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 Wikipedia has a Simple English edition for
non-native speakers of English
 Wikipedia also has a great deal of material in
its editions for other languages

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 Possible objection is that text will not flow,
since comprised of disparate articles
 Articles within subject areas often largely
written by same groups of experts
 Wikipedia’s emphasis on neutral point of view
discourages jarring statements

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http://newworld.ac
 Research on accuracy of Wikipedia articles
has not supported academics’ concern
 When material is not suitable as a primary
text, can still serve as a supplemental text
 Realistically, for many students choice is not
between a Wikipedia textbook and a
commercial textbook, it’s between this and
nothing
 Wikipedia textbooks can be used as a
stopgap whilst purpose-built textbooks are in
progress

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 For students with Internet access, in theory
courses could simply refer to the articles
themselves
 Assembling as a textbook is a convenience
for students
 Articles are frozen when added to a
textbooks, instructors know what to expect
 Forking allows revision to avoid duplication
and to harmonise examples

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 There is a service called Boundless that
operates on a similar premise
 Service is meant as alternative to a book, not
as a replacement provider of books
 It is not possible to export from their system,
and they offer restricted access

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