In a recent blog post, David Wiley observed that "Our fixation on [OER] discovery and assembly also distracts us from other serious platform needs – like platforms for the collaborative development of OER and open assessments (assessments are the lifeblood of this new generation of platforms), where faculty and students can work together to create and update the core materials that support learning in our institutions." [source: https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/4892]
In this presentation, Steel Wagstaff (from UW-Madison) and Hugh McGuire (founder of Pressbooks) will provide an update on recent work they've undertaken to transform Pressbooks (an open-source book publishing tool) into a OER platform which we believe will go some distance towards meeting some of the 'serious platform needs' that many of us in the field have identified over the past decade. We will share some of the guiding principles which have directed our work, provide an update on exciting recent developments, and share a roadmap for future development, partnership, and use cases. We will also demonstrate how this enhanced version of Pressbooks allows users to collaborate in the construction of interactive activities and a range of formative assessments, natively supports robust annotation behaviors, and is capable of generative detailed learning analytics regarding learners engagement with the text (including their reading practices, engagement with media, annotation behavior, as well as their interaction with assessments and other interactive elements of the text).
We will conclude our presentation with a discussion of problems and challenges we've identified for future development and extend an invitation to interested listeners to both use and contribute to our efforts.
