Overview of the LibreTexts project and what the new Department of Education grant will make possible. How to get involved.

1. Humanities
Resistance is Futile:
The Oncoming OER Revolution and How
Libretexts can help you Navigate It
Delmar Larsen
Department of Chemistry, University of
California, Davis
https://twitter.com/libretexts
https://facebook.com/Libretexts
http://www.Libretexts.org
CC BY 2.0: Marcin Wichary
Text
"Resistance is Futile: The Oncoming OER Revolution and How Libretexts can help
you Navigate It" by Delmar Larsen, LibreTexts is licensed under CC BY 4.0

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Three Principal Aspects of how the
LibreTexts is used
The LibreTexts as a Curated Repository of “living”
Content – largest on the net
The LibreTexts as a Construction and
Dissemination Platform – 100s of course
The LibreTexts as Student Assessment/Performance
Tool – 60M students annually

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The Textbook Problem #1:
Costs, inflexibility, & wasted effort
The amount that students
are spending on books
and supplies topped out
at $1,200 this year,
according to the College
Board.
That’s equivalent to 14%
percent of tuition at a
four-year, public college –
and 39% percent of tuition
at community college.
CHART by www.aei-ideas.org
Data by WashPIRG

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The Textbook Problem #2:
Textbooks can be limiting, not empowering
Textbooks should be tool to aid in the
building of a robust knowledge base in
students
Textbooks should not be a crutch to limit
content development, pedagogy,
assessment and advancement
Public Domain
CC BY SA 4.0; PageMaker787 @ Wikicommons

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The Textbook Problem #3:
Textbooks hinder Education Advances
Textbook publishers operate as de facto “gatekeepers” that hinders the modernization
of education separating (wide-spread) students from SOTL researchers.
The existing centralized system with the commercial textbook acting as a gatekeeper
SOTL Researchers and
knowledge creators
Students and
Instructors
Large
Commercial
Textbook
Companies
$
$
$
T

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We need to stop thinking about
building OER individual textbooks…
We need to start thinking about building
OER “textlibraries”…
The Textbook of the Future is not the
textbook of the past
CC BY 2.0; Stewart Butterfield - flickr

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What are the LibreText Libraries?

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DOEd RFP
Issued July 29, 2018
Proposals due August 29, 2018
Award to LibreTexts announced October 1, 2018
• Absolute Priority 1—Improving Collaboration and
Dissemination Through Consortia Arrangements.
•
• Absolute Priority 2—Addressing Gaps in the Open Textbook
Marketplace and Bringing Solutions to Scale.
• Absolute Priority 3—Promoting Degree Completion.
• Competitive Preference Priority— Using Technology-Based
Strategies for Personalized Learning and Continuous
Improvement

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Very Short upshot of Proposal
• Libretexts is a community effort
• All are welcome to join
• Libretexts is a construction/dissemination/usage
platform with all you expect (or will expect)
• Content integrated into LibreTexts has the same
formatting allowing fast and easy remixing into
textbooks and other OER
• LibreTexts will work with any faculty, campus or OER
team to move forward together

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Improving Collaboration and Dissemination
Through Consortia Arrangements.

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LibreTexts Teams
The proposal called for five teams
• Content creation
• Content harvesting
• Dissemination and outreach
• Technology development and implementation
• Assessment and analysis

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• Ease of dissemination
• Seamlessly integrates content over multiple sub-fields or
across different fields
• Facilitates highly-collaborative and highly-distributed
construction efforts
• Provides a mechanism for more advanced features than a
PDF or paper-based book Online Homework system
(adaptive)
• 3D capabilities
• Multimedia including videos and simulations
• Numerical calculations infrastructure
• Student tracking and assessment
• Integrated annotation infrastructure
Why Online?
We focus on building an integrated online platform.

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MindTouch is a commercial, mobile-ready, cloud-delivered
web platform for knowledge collaboration and multi-
channel delivery of customer support documentation
Libretexts is powered by Mindtouch
All rights reserved; Mindtouch

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Building the Largest OER Repository
Integration of
Existing Content
Construction of
New Content
Mechanism 1: Student contribution via course effort (e.g., extra credit)
Mechanism 2: Student integration of existing content from faculty
Mechanism 3: Faculty construction of raw content from scratch
and
Public Domain; DS Larsen

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Use the Libretexts like a “Construct”
Storeroom of Educational Content
Swap “Weapons of Tooth Death” for
“Weapons of Education”
CC BY SA 3.0; unported; Tiia Monto

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Course LibreTexts

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• Are a source of editable on line textbooks with Creative Common copyrights
• Map LibreTexts material into commercial texts for those that cannot buy expensive texts
• Provide a starting place for faculty to generate a LibreText for their classes
Faculty do not need to recreate the wheel The maps can be adapted to that instructor’s
specific desires. Textmaps are complemented by the modules in the Core.
Textmaps

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https://chem.libretexts.org/Development_Details/OER_Remixer
The OER Remixer is a self-service tool to rapidly assemble a LibreText from existing sources. This tutorial
will include both an explanation of the User Interface as well as a walkthrough of how to do basic tasks.

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LibreTexts Content Development

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Harvesting Team
Common format allows simple integration and modification

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For the student, the course LibreText is the “decoder”
to the 25,000 pages of content in the libraries
CC BY SA 4.0 Intnl;
Samantha (Wiki Ed)

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How to Adopt a Libretext?
Does something
identical exist in the
Libraries already?
Copy, Paste,
and Go
yes
no
Does something
similar exist in the
Libraries already?
yes Copy, Paste,
Edit, and Go
no
Identify what you want…

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Does something
similar exist outside
the Libraries already?
yes
Ask
permission to
integrate into
LibreTexts
How to Adopt a Libretext?
no
no
Construct from
Scratch… involve
faculty and students
yes Copy,
Paste, Edit,
and Go
no
yes Copy,
Paste, Edit,
and Go

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Using Technology-Based Strategies for Personalized
Learning and Continuous Improvement
WebWork
Medicine
Business

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Can extract
information regarding
student study habits.
Tracking Student Behavior to optimize
Pedagogy (Traditional Format)
Clear Cramming

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Tracking Student Behavior to optimize
Pedagogy (Flipped Format)
Cramming is Reduced
in a Flipped Class at
MRU
Brett McClollum (Chemistry)

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7/25/2015 8/15/2015 9/5/2015 9/26/2015 10/17/2015 11/7/2015 11/28/2015 12/19/2015
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
PageViews
Date
Chem 309 (SSC: Bennett)
1/1/2015 1/22/2015 2/12/2015 3/5/2015 3/26/2015 4/16/2015 5/7/2015
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
PageViews
Date
Chem 309 (SSC: Bennett)
Exams
Tracking Student Behavior to optimize
Pedagogy (Flipped Format)
Cramming is not observed in a
Flipped Class at Sacramento City
College
Dianne Bennett
(Chemistry)

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Three Quarter Evaluation Pilot
Stage 1 (Spring 2014 ): Compare LibreTexts to Conventional
Textbook in same Class (Chem 2C at UCD) with same
instructor.
Stage 2 (Summer 2014): Assess LibreTexts in same class (Chem
2C), but taught under different conditions (faster pace).
Stage 3 (Fall 2014): Assess LibreTexts in same class (Chem 2A),
but with two different instructors.
Independent Evaluation team: iAMSTEM Hub
at UC Davis (http://iamstem.ucdavis.edu)
• Marco Molinaro
• Greg Allen (head TA)
Educause Learning Initiative Brief, Feb. (2015).
Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 16, 939-948 (2015).

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Stage 1: Evaluation Protocols
ChemWiki
(class of 550 students)
Petrucci et al.
(class of 550 students)
Pre/post Exams Questions
Pre/post “Notice to Expert Thinking” or “Thinking like a Chemist”
COPUS classroom observations
“The Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM”
Student level Weekly Reading Surveys
Midterm and Final Exam Grades (identical tests)
Course Grades
Final Pilot Impression Survey
Student level ChemWiki usage statistics
(who, what, where, when)
Course Evaluation (at student level via Qualtrics)
Future Grades CBE Life Sci Educ. 2013 Winter; 12(4): 618–627.

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Exam Performance
Daily Wikitext usage (only ChemWiki class students)
Exam#1
Exam#2
Mean: 72.9%
Std: 12.4%
Mean: 73.65%
Std: 11.9%
Mean: 61.3%
Std: 14.6%
Mean: 60.8%
Std: 14.9%
The exam
performances are
statistically identical
for both classes

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Variable Post-test Midterm 1 Midterm 2 Final Exam
Total Exam
Points
Course Grade
Constant 70.37*** 63.89*** 75.84*** 38.39*** 69.80*** 75.05***
ChemWiki
(90% CI)
0.09
(-1.22, 1.39)
-1.45
(-3.12, .22)
0.34
(-1.05, 1.73)
-0.01
(-.72, .71)
-0.33
(-1.53, .87)
-0.48
(-1.66, .69)
Pre
Assessment
0.43*** 0.53*** 0.35*** 0.25*** 0.45*** 0.42***
First
Generation
-1.75 -1.97 -2.04 -0.43 -1.47 -1.61
Low Income 1.40 -0.16 0.88 -0.09 0.13 0.41
URM -0.65 -1.83 -0.39 -0.66 -1.16 -0.63
Male 2.59** -1.24 1.67 1.11* 0.98 0.53
Previous Units -0.05** -0.12*** -0.03 -0.05*** -0.08*** -0.09***
SAT Total 0.01*** 0.01 0.01* 0.01** 0.01** 0.01**
STEM Major 0.92 2.56 0.55 1.00 1.68 1.52
Transfer -0.90 -6.54* -4.29 -2.47* -5.03* -4.20*
R2 .26 .24 .16 .30 .30 .28
* p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001
NOTE: All dependent variables are in percentage points; The equivalency margin for non-inferiority is 2%
Ordinary Least Squares Regression Model Estimating Effects of Libretexts on the Post Score Utilizing a Non-
Inferiority Framework
Many Variables are Measured (Propensity-Score Matching)
Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 16, 939-948 (2015).

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Low Wiki Users (n=133) High Wiki Users (n=132)
Wiki Page Views 77.43*** 414.64***
First Generation 0.36 0.33
Low Income 0.26 0.17
URM 0.2 0.2
Male 0.45* 0.32*
Transfer 0.02 0.04
STEM Major 0.9 0.89
Course Grade 71.43*** 79.76***
SAT Total 1871 1848
* p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001
Does Studying Affect Exam Performance?

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Crammer Definition: 75% of pageviews 24 hours before the exam
Group # students Avg Score StDev
Cram 68 68.0 20.1
Non 323 77.9 18.7
Group # students Avg Score StDev
Cram 65 86.3 14.4
Non 331 90.1 13.1
Note: Criteria also excludes those with pageviews<10
Group # students Avg Score StDev
Cram 58 128.1 26.1
Non 282 131.5 21.7
Does Cramming Affect Exam Performance?
Exam 1
Exam 2
Final

35. Humanities
https://als.csuprojects.org/
Affordable Learning $olutions
Supporters
Gerry Hanley
CSU
Leslie Kennedy
AL$ - CSU
Ralph Hexter
UCD Provost
MacKenzie Smith
Librarian

36. Humanities
What is LibreTexts? (The big idea)
Who is it aimed at?
How does it differ from other open source materials offerings?
How do we get materials?
Are they kept up to date?
What's changing with the new grant we got?
If a faculty member wants to use libreTexts, what do they do?
Questions to myself…
"Resistance is Futile: The Oncoming OER Revolution and How Libretexts can help you Navigate It" by
Delmar Larsen, LibreTexts is licensed under CC BY 4.0