What impact did the Open Textbook Network workshop have on participants?
Here’s a selection of feedback from across the 14 workshops we conducted:
“We are currently all writing module descriptors for our new course validation and guess what? They all have Open Access Texts in the reading lists (polishes my halo!). I have also had a meeting with the student union rep for the business school recently and explained the Open Access texts. So I have a feeling we will be driving our students much more towards their usage in the next academic year.
It was interesting reviewing [Introducing Marketing] – I am currently writing a chapter for a new Marketing text with colleagues, so it did make me think about the ethics of writing yet another marketing book that students are going to have to pay for! Who knows, maybe we will get our act together and write an Open Access text at some point in the future…”
Workshop Participant (Senior Lecturer, Business, Management & Marketing, Staffordshire University. Via Email)
“Attending the workshop helped to broaden my mind and deepen my understanding of open learning practices. I think we are on the cusp of a paradigm shift with regard to these approaches becoming more mainstream so the workshop helped me to understand and internalise what is possible. I am on sabbatical this year but plan to include open learning resources in my reading lists next year.”
Workshop Participant (NUI Galway. Via Interview)
“It has made me think more about the importance of open textbooks. How I can sign post my students to utilise the open textbook directory, and how I may contribute towards this (e.g. submitting a book) in the future.”
Workshop Participant (Glasgow Caledonian University. Via Interview)
“First thing I did after the workshop is that I’m lecturing a module and what I’ve done now is I ordered an online copy to the university which makes it fully available to the students; so the university kind of pays for it, that access rights, the students can have an online copy. Before that I would have put a few books out, I tried my best to get a discount off the publisher for the students, but I think the open publishing [university] is available, definitely has impacted me in terms of not putting the cost onto the student because they have a myriad of issues they have to contemplate without adding a cost-base thing to the module I’m lecturing on.”
Workshop Participant (NUI Galway. Via Interview)
In October 2018 during #opened18 we also released a two page overview of the project’s impact:
