This article originally appeared in the IU Libraries 2019 Annual Report. The following excerpt is republished with permission.
Using open scholarship philosophies, librarians and faculty use IU Pressbooks to publish classroom work.
Innovate. Teach. Measure. Revise. It’s a rhythm that IU librarians Sarah Hare and Julie Marie Frye used to pattern their long-term EDUC-L700 collaboration with School of Education faculty member Beth Lewis Samuelson.
After multiple semesters all three agree the experience transformed far more than curriculum. Samuelson noted, “We were always evolving and developing – there was just this great intellectual give-and-take between the three of us.”
Initially, the idea was to use the IU Libraries Jay Information Literacy Course grant to redesign a doctoral course assignment focused on research methodologies. Completed student submissions were published as an Open Educational Resource (OER) through IU Pressbooks. This is a freely available resource that others can read, cite, and revise, thanks to university funds.
“I do a lot of work in East Africa, and I grew up in a context where people didn’t have a lot of access. I wanted my students to have a chance to think about how publishing can be more than a top-tier journal that doesn’t really make its material available,” said Samuelson.