Drafting: From Idea to First Revision

By this point, you likely have already done a great deal of foundational work. Ideally, you have

• Reviewed existing OER in your field and identified gaps in them
• Mapped out your learning objectives and their practice
• Planned the route your learners will follow

Now, you are ready to start developing your OER.

This is the phase where the trail you designed starts to take shape. The development phase of OER creation is when you finally get to start writing, creating, remixing, and seeing your ideas come to life. In the backward design process, you planned the trail. In this phase, you begin clearing and shaping it so others can follow it. While the next few chapters will guide you through designing the visual layout of your chapters, making decisions, tips for creating and remixing OER, revising with equity in mind, and strategies for when you’re stuck in drafting and revising, this chapter is focused on making sure you are set up for success.

Use Your Map

Your OERFSJ Mapping Spreadsheet [Website] is still your guide during the development phase. Once you start writing or remixing existing OER, it’s easy to get off track and wander into concepts or topics that were not in your plan.  It’s understandable. The process of writing lends itself to new idea generation, and that OER you are remixing has some pretty cool ideas, after all. While new ideas and new pieces of existing OER are all good, and you may end up using some of them, it is important to use your construction plan as your guide. Here are a few reasons why:

•  Gaps and Overlaps. If you created this OER with a team, changing course and writing about something not planned can put your team’s work at risk. Ignoring your map may cause some parts of your OER to be built twice while others are left unfinished.
• Misalignment. Remember those learning objectives? Students need the right content, practice, and support in each chapter in order to be successful in the course. Wandering into territory you did not intend to cover, however lovely it is, can pull attention away from the main route and weaken the alignment between objectives, content, and assessment.
• Time and Energy Loss. Following every interesting detour can slow the build. Drafting already takes substantial time and effort. Staying with the plan helps you use that time intentionally, rather than spending it on material that may later need to be cut, moved, or heavily revised.

Determine Naming Conventions 

With so many pieces involved in creating and remixing an OER, keeping track of content (and versions of content) is vital.

“I saved that somewhere…”

Creating and remixing an OER is a big project. If you are working with others, there are even more files, folders, and links to manage. Time and energy are in short supply, and nothing steals both more than hunting for and opening seventeen files all entitled “Untitled” to find that one draft you saved a few weeks ago. As mentioned in the Planning for Sustainable Growth chapter, before you begin developing, saving, and sharing your files, as a team, come up with a standard naming convention that you will use to save, store, and manage your files. Doing so will increase your team’s efficiency during and long after creating your OER.

Back It Up

Backing up your OER drafts as you write and remix is one of those habits that can save you a lot of stress down the road. Whether it’s a tech glitch, a misplaced file, or an accidental overwrite, things happen, and losing hours (or days!) of work isn’t fun – or inexpensive – for anyone. Keeping backups isn’t just about avoiding disasters; it’s also a great way to stay organized and track your progress. Plus, if you’re collaborating with others, having clear, saved versions of your work makes it easier for everyone to stay on the same page.

Create a Private, Creative Space

If you are drafting directly in Pressbooks, you may want to ensure your workspace is hidden from students and other viewers while you draft. Pressbooks makes it easy to toggle the privacy level of your entire book or just the chapter on which you are working.

Select the arrow to view the guidance for each of these steps.

Where Will You Draft?

The next step is to decide where the drafting will take place. There are a couple of common options.

Draft in Word or Google documents that are stored in a shared space.

Many creators draft in Word or Google Docs and store those files in a shared folder. One helpful practice is to embed links to each chapter draft directly into your  OERFSJ Mapping Spreadsheet [Website]. This keeps documents and design plans together in one place.

This team of faculty creators came up with an excellent and clever way to share their Google documents for each chapter they were drafting. In their OERFSJ Mapping Spreadsheet [Website], they embedded links to the Google docs for each chapter of their developing OER. This ensured that all documents and their aligned design plans were safely stored in one shared space.

 

Draft directly in your Pressbook

If you plan to use a great deal of an already existing OER that resides in Pressbooks, consider cloning the existing Pressbook, and drafting your OER directly in the cloned version. This gives you a working base while keeping your drafting and remixing in the platform where the final text will live.

Start With What You Have

If you’ve completed your design map, you have left yourself clear guidance about whether each chapter will be created by remixing the chapter from existing OER, creating the chapter from scratch, or some combination of both. If you haven’t made that plan, head to the Content Mapping chapter to help you make those decisions.

During the Design Phase of the OER for Social Justice project, this team of faculty creators specified which parts of the OER would need to be remixed [1] and which would need to be written from scratch [2].

Regardless of whether you are writing from scratch or remixing OER, it’s helpful to start with what you already have. Even if it feels disorganized at first, seeing what you already have and placing it within your page outline keeps you from duplicating content and clarifies where you need to spend your time. So, start by placing the pieces of content you already have in your drafting space. Select the arrow to view examples of each step.

Use your OERFSJ Mapping Spreadsheet [Website] to:

Step 1: Place Learning Objectives at the Top of Your Draft

The learning objectives from your OER Content and Assessment map become the learning objectives at the top of your chapter.

Step 2: Create a Content Outline

Use your planned Chapter Sections to create your main headings and subheadings Chapter Sections.

Step 3: Paste in Your Plans and Existing Content

Under each section, paste your notes, links, existing content, and to-do items. These become your starting points for each part of the chapter.

Remember that your content can also be conveyed by using a good video or even an audio recording like a podcast. If you are drafting in Pressbooks, you will want to embed both rather than link out to them elsewhere to keep your learners engaged. If you are drafting in Word or Google Docs, you will want to paste the link to your video but write a quick synopsis with it to remind you of what is covered. Otherwise, you may end up covering the same content twice — once in the video and once in your text.

 

Step 4: Note Where Learning Objectives Will Be Covered

Under each heading or subheading, note which learning objective will be addressed there. This keeps the objectives central as you draft.

Step 5: Note Where Graphs, Images, or Simulations Will Go

If you already have images or figures selected, place them where you expect to use them. If you are drafting in Pressbooks, add the TASL information in the Pressbooks metadata as you add each image. If you are drafting in Word or Google, copy and paste the image’s TASL underneath each image to make adding the metadata easier later.

Rather than distracting learners with random images, good instruction critically engages with the images it includes. Having the images and graphs you plan to use in front of you as you draft ensures you include references to and engagement with them as you write. Having the images and graphs you plan to use in front of you as you draft ensures you include references to and engagement with them. This can be done as you write the text or by crafting captions as you draft.

 

Step 6: Note What Interactivity or Practice You Plan to Use

Place notes, links, or placeholders where interactive practices or review will eventually go [1]. Then, note which learning objectives are being measured by each activity [2].

Like images and graphs, by placing the planned interactivity within your draft, you are ensuring that you craft your writing to incorporate or build toward that review interactivity, saving you hours of revision time later on.

If you have cloned an existing Pressbook, follow the above steps to adapt the chapter to your plan in your OERFSJ Mapping Spreadsheet [Website].

Track Your Sources

It is easy, as you remix various OER, to lose track of the licenses for individual OER pieces. That is risky, because you must ensure you are using each OER as its license requires.

One excellent practice is to use different colors for each OER source and its corresponding license in your working draft. For example, one source and its attribution might be green, while another is blue. That way, as you remix, rewrite, and rearrange content, you can quickly review which license is attached to which material. Later, when you choose a license for your newly created chapter, you can see which sources you ended up using and decide on a compatible license.

Another strategy is to visually distinguish your own writing from remixed material while drafting. For example, some remixers italicize all of their own writing and keep remixed OER in regular font. This is not a final formatting strategy. It is simply a drafting aid that helps you see what is original, what is adapted, and what still needs attribution.

Fill in the Gaps…and Write!

Now that you have gathered all the content and review pieces from your map under each heading and subheading, it’s time to fill in gaps with your own writing. Writing and remixing is very much a personal journey. You might choose to start:

• By logic, moving from the introduction through the chapter
• By ease, starting with material you already have in slide decks, lectures, or assignments
• By energy, starting with the part you feel most ready to write and saving the harder pieces for later

Wherever you choose to start, keep on going. The draft is about getting it out of your mind and onto the page. You’ll clean it up and revise it later. For now, carve out some time, and let the writing flow, following your plan you’ve put in place.

Have I Done Enough?

You have drafted and remixed, and your chapter seems to be coming together. Is it done, or do you need to do more? How do you know whether it is enough? Reviewing your draft with the following questions in mind can help you shore up the missing pieces and voices in your developing chapter.

If you cloned or adopted an entire OER as the base of your OER draft

While it’s a huge help to start with a whole, existing OER as your base, it can be difficult to see what you’ve contributed in proportion to the entire OER. There is no magic ratio here, but be careful that you are developing, transforming, or adding to the OER in measurable ways. Consider what sets your OER apart from the original. Is there a significant improvement in your version? If not, what can you do to move the needle so that future instructors can tell the difference between your version and the original?

If you have cloned or are adapting an existing OER, you will want to keep a running Change Log of what you have changed. This can later be added to the front matter of your OER, so future users can see the difference between your version and the original.

If you are remixing an OER

Have you mostly adopted an existing OER or have you added to and adapted the content? It’s perfectly fine to adopt parts of your OER. It’s also perfectly fine to adapt existing OER in different ways. For example, you may adopt one chapter of an existing OER and simply add a paragraph or two of your own, improve accessibility, or change the images. For another chapter, you may add learning objectives and an aligned H5P review activity at the end. Each chapter may require different adaptations, but just like with a cloned OER, you will want to ensure you’ve developed, transformed, or added to the OER in measurable ways.

Keep in mind that each chapter may require different licenses and attributions, depending on what was done in the writing and remixing of the chapter. Review the Remixing Openly Licensed Materials chapter for help.

For everyone

Look at your chapter again to see whether it:

• • Follows a logical format, moving from foundations, theories, or simple content to more complex applications
  • Incorporates Lambert’s 3Rs (more on this in the next chapter)
  • Includes updated information and cites recent or relevant research
  • Includes and critically engages with images or interactivity
  • Includes stated learning objectives, content that covers each of the learning objectives, and practice or review aligned to those objectives
  • Includes accessible content (or at least a plan for your content to be accessible)
  • Includes transitions into and out of your chapter using introductions, conclusions, or other guiding language
  • Includes references and citations
  • Includes attributions for the chapter, images, and any adopted or remixed OER pieces.

These considerations are common when writing and remixing an OER. In the next chapter, the focus shifts to revising your draft through a more intentional, inclusive lens.