A Collaborative Design Approach for Open Textbook Development

Open scholarship can provide fertile ground for generating ideas and strengthening student learning experiences through teamwork in real-life settings. This session reports on a collaborative design approach used to develop a high-quality open textbook. A team of 14 graduate students and three mentors worked together to revise an openly licensed text intended to improve how we learn about instructional design in Canadian universities and beyond. To contribute an affordable, accessible, and interactive textbook, the team collaborated to develop a project plan, create interactive media, edit the book content, interview subject-matter experts, and participate in the co-creation and sharing of knowledge. The team adopted a design-based research (DBR) approach (e.g., exploration, analysis, design, evaluation, and revision) that emphasized collaborative problem solving, collective intelligence, open practices, and ongoing peer review (Barab, 2014; Jacobsen, 2014; O’Neill, 2012). Overall, the key objectives of this session are to: 1) profile methodological advancements and connections between DBR protocols and open textbook scholarship; 2) examine the effectiveness of utilizing a collaborative design approach for producing meaningful educational resources in higher education contexts; and 3) prompt discussion on the value of teamwork for innovative and sustainable open textbook development.