Reaching the Summit: Publishing
Introducing Your OER
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to
- Identify characteristics of OER introductions
- Draft the introduction to your OER
After countless hours on this intrepid trek, your OER is special and you know it. Your OER is centered on social justice, your open pedagogy assignments are a campus hit, and you even shared openly licensed ancillary materials so adapting faculty could take full advantage of your beautifully aligned instructional design.
But how will adapting faculty know how great your OER is? How will students appreciate their assigned reading?
You have to hook your reader with your introduction. Readers, whether instructors in need of a textbook or students loaded with required reading, must be immediately intrigued, or they will move on to something more entertaining, relevant, or both.
In this chapter, we will share some tips for getting a foothold and then scaling writing an introduction and descriptions for your Pressbook.
Get a Foothold
As a first step to writing your introduction, let’s walk in the shoes of those who have come before by looking at some samples.
Select the arrow to view examples of OER introductions.
Inspirational Introductions
In the tutorial, use the left and right arrows to navigate the tool. While reading, consider the strengths of the authors’ approaches and if there is anything you would like to replicate in your introduction.
Write the Long and Short of It
Use this section to draft the introduction for your front matter and a shorter description for your webbook’s homepage. The shorter descriptions can be used to promote your OER in repositories, directories, and more.
Select the arrow for guidance to write and place introductions and descriptions
Formal Introduction
Let’s take time to draft an introduction to your OER. Once completed, place your introduction in the front matter of your OER on its own identifiable page.
Your Turn: Write Your Introduction
Draft your OER’s introduction in the tutorial below, using the right arrow to advance. Don’t forget to download your draft by selecting the “Create document” button on the third page.
Descriptions
Now that you have your introduction in place, you are ready to create descriptions for your Pressbook. There are three types of descriptions in Pressbooks:
- The tagline sums up your OER in one sentence.
- The short description is a small paragraph that displays on your webbook’s homepage, under your title and author listing and to the right of your book cover. We strongly recommend creating a short description to promote your OER.
- The long description will appear in the footer of your Pressbook homepage and in the Pressbooks directory. You could include additional information, such as snippets from peer reviews, that would encourage peer instructors to review your OER for adoption.
We strongly recommend having a short description because of its prominence on your homepage and its utility to your reader.
Writing Descriptions
When writing your descriptions, you may elect to revise your introduction into a short paragraph or one snappy sentence. Remember to make it catchy to ensure your reader wants to continue to engage with your textbook. If you are short on time, you could use the generative AI tool of your choice to create descriptions or to critique the ones you author. Below is an example of a prompt we used.
AI Prompt for Descriptions
Placing Descriptions
Once you have written or generated and revised your descriptions, you will place them in your Pressbook. Using the left menu in the Pressbooks editor, select Book Info under the Book Info menu. From there, scroll to the Book Tagline field [2], Short Description field [3], and Long Description field. Copy and paste your descriptions and then select Save.
That is the long and short of introducing your OER through a formal introduction and short descriptions. Remember to continue to iterate on your introduction and descriptions as your OER matures.
Image Descriptions
Image 1. Screenshot of a Pressbooks-style page titled “Welcome” with the section heading “The Trailhead.” The page contains several paragraphs introducing Open Voices, Just Choices: OER for Social Justice Faculty Handbook, describing the OERFSJ grant, the partner institutions, the project team, the handbook’s purpose, and links to the appendix and contact form. Transcript: Welcome; The Trailhead;
Open Voices, Just Choices: OER for Social Justice Faculty Handbook was designed for the 11 faculty teams [Website] participating in the Open Educational Resources (OER) for Social Justice [Website] (OERFSJ) grant. OERFSJ, the partnership between Loyola Marymount University, Saint Mary’s College of California, Santa Clara University, and the University of San Francisco, sought to integrate diverse, equitable, inclusive, and anti-racist resources into high-enrollment courses across multiple disciplines. Our OERFSJ grant project team [Website] trained teaching faculty how to adapt, create, and publish OER while building our curriculum to do so. Our concurrent and transparent creation process in Pressbooks and H5P nourished our empathy for our faculty authors and helped us cut tracks. With readings, step-by-step technical guidance, and templates, this OER serves as your road map. Open Voices will always be a work in progress. We hope you too become comfortably patient with the imperfectly iterative processes of creating and learning in the open. We named our work Open Voices, Just Choices to reflect the vulnerability and bravery in creating inclusive OER centered on social justice principles [Website]. To assist you in guiding your team or other teams, we have included a list of faculty training tools integrated into the handbook instruction and in the Appendix [Website]. We also have administrative templated tools accessible in the Appendix [Website] to help you manage your OER program. We welcome your input to improve this handbook. Please contact us using this form [Website]. Thank you for joining us on this journey. [Return to Image 1]
