Iowa State's commitment to open educational resources (OER) allows instructors to teach their chosen material and keep costs down for students. Pressbooks -- a web-based authoring tool -- has played an integral part in growing the number of open books and textbooks developed as the tool used by the ISU Digital Press, a unit of the university library.
Examples of textbooks published by the ISU Digital Press
Since 2019, the digital press has published more than 40 OER for Iowa State courses including textbooks, lab books and case studies. Topics range from food prep to human anatomy to Chinese.
"We have a dozen more books in production right now," said Abbey Elder, open access and scholarly communication librarian. "A few are in their second or even working toward their third editions."
"Introduction to Soil Science," authored by agronomy associate teaching professor Amber Anderson, is a popular book developed with Pressbooks. Over the past two years, it has had more than 79,000 users, 160,000 views and more than 1,600 downloads across the world, including readers in the U.S., India, Nigeria and the Philippines.
Easier process
Faculty interested in developing their own book or textbook using Pressbooks with the ISU Digital Press complete a proposal form to begin the process. Faculty develop the content for their book, and digital press staff -- led by Harrison Inefuku, scholarly publishing services librarian, and Scott McCleary, open publishing editor -- handle formatting and production work in Pressbooks for the author.
"The press staff does all the importing and formatting, and faculty develop the content using tools they are familiar with," Elder said. "The only time faculty would need to work in Pressbooks is to work with some of the interactive elements."
Working with the digital press -- which is free to authors -- also ensures faculty receive help with cover design and peer review.
OER use and adoption
Pressbooks integrates with Canvas so students can read directly from their modules without having to go to another website for class material. Instructors can get creative with their teaching by embedding podcasts, videos, interactive exercises and quizzes directly into a book. ISU instructors don't need to develop new materials to benefit from these open textbooks. They can adopt books published at other institutions.
Elder said there's been a consistent increase in use and the number of books developed through the digital press in recent years. Many instructors who receive Miller Open Education mini-grants publish their books or textbooks using Pressbooks. Instructors also use it to adapt OER from other universities to fit their needs.
"The tool allows us to import previously published works from other institutions," she said. "We have even had authors at other universities contact us to publish their book because they like the look of what we do. If it is in a discipline that we feel could be used here, we may work with them."
Examples of OER at other universities developed with Pressbooks:
- University of Wisconsin: Nursing Management and Professional Concepts, 2nd Edition
- Virginia Tech University: Aerodynamics and Aircraft Performance, 3rd edition
Interested in OER?
Other kinds of OER include online courses, lecture slides, videos and quizzes. Faculty who want to learn more or start looking for resources can contact a subject librarian. The university library offers support for faculty wanting to develop an OER or those looking to adopt an OER already in use. In addition to creating textbooks in Pressbooks, Elder said faculty can share slides, text banks and other materials as OER, allowing other instructors access to content instead of creating it from scratch.
"We also are in the process of making the books we publish connect to additional material," she said. "So along with the book that was published, we can attach the slides that go with it to make it a simpler process for instructors to adopt our books for their courses."
