7 Introduction: Planning an OER Project

This chapter introduces strategies for planning an OER project.

The Planning, Workflow, & Development section offers guidelines on planning, workflow, and development of Open Educational Resource (OER) Textbooks. The first section, planning, offers selected guidelines from the BCcampus Self-Publishing Guide. These have been modified for American English spelling conventions. The second section, workflow and organization of labor, offers selected guidelines from the BCcampus Self-Publishing Guide on project outlines and timelines, and on technology accounts and training, as well as a sample development workflow used for a previous UH OER text.

The Outlining, Compiling & Writing section offers guidelines and suggestions on outlining, compiling, and writing your OER textbook and materials. The Outlining guide includes 5 rules of textbook development, structuring your open textbook, and a textbook outline. The Compiling guide includes suggestions on collecting, organizing, and naming files and resources, version control of files and resources, and making sure everyone who needs access is able to access the files and resources. The Writing guide includes suggestions on consistency in tone, audience, planning for multiple learning styles, and sample style sheets, as well as information on glossaries and indexing.

The Pressbooks Quick Guide offers a quick guide to Pressbooks, including a series of short video introductions to key topics, short powerpoint guides, Pressbooks webinar recordings from BCcampus, a list of post-secondary institutions in the U.S. and Canada with their own Pressbooks catalogs, and frequently asked questions about Pressbooks.