 Hello everyone and welcome to this presentation, Collaborative Open Textbook Creation – Perspectives on Student Involvement. My name is Genda Cox and I will be presenting today. I will be joined by Michelle and Bianca who will be in the chat room available for any questions and hopefully we'll have a little bit of question time at the end of this presentation. We are all from the University of Cape Town and that's what our campus looks like. We're a residential university and we are kind of researched, focused and research intensive. The team that I represent is the Digital Open Textbooks for Development Team. This work started out as a project funded by the Canadian IDRC and now fortunately has become an initiative that we can continue this work at the University of Cape Town. So we're very pleased about that. The general objective was to contribute to improving inclusion in South African higher education by addressing equitable access to appropriate and relevant learning resources. What we were exploring in this work was the relationship between social justice open education and open textbooks and arguing that open textbooks have a very specific role in addressing injustice in higher education. A little bit about our particular perspective of social justice. We follow the work of political philosopher Nancy Fraser and what she says is that the concept requires the organisation of social arrangements that make it possible for everyone to participate equally in society and that she calls participatory parity and that needs to exist on these three levels that she identifies, levels or dimensions that she identifies the economic, the cultural and the political. So these are some of our findings of the work that we've been doing for several years with this project beginning in 2018. So what is that relationship between open textbooks and social justice? Well, first of all, open textbooks save money and that is where the economic dimension comes in. We saw across South Africa protests several years back about fees must fall. Successful protests that have meant a lot more student support but not support for textbook purchases. The other image is from OpenStacks from Rice University where students stood up for their rights and said how important it is for them that textbooks should be free. What we've also found which is particularly interesting is that open textbooks have a very specific role in curriculum change. When you're thinking about curriculum, it's not only your pedagogy but also your content that needs to change. And so we can see how this is the cultural aspect of social justice that can be addressed. Images like this Rhodes must fall image where university students at the University of Cape Town protested because there was a statue of Cecil John Rhodes, a colonist at the front of the university and we had his statue removed. So the representation was not of those students but rather of a colonial past. So we talk about decolonizing a lot in our context and open textbooks we've seen is a great way to bring in local examples and collaborate. And so we see that open textbooks is a fantastic vehicle for collaboration and co-creation. And this is where the silenced voices, the political aspect comes in where all of a sudden traditional power relationships have been overturned and collaborators are brought in and students are brought in. So and we've seen a rise in the literature recently around students as partners. In fact there's a journal, the international journal for students as partners, which focuses on this area. A very important aspect that we need to take very seriously. So if we look at our open textbooks we have this definition. We know these facts about open textbooks, they're digital, freely available. They are generally kind of around a particular teaching and learning content. They have affordances for multimedia and inclusion of all kinds of other materials. They can be published on different platforms in different ways and even have options for print. So this is also very important if we're looking at the global south or areas where there is less access to technology and the internet. And then in red those last two points. Very importantly we found that there's a role of open textbooks in collaborative authorship, inclusive authorship, inclusive quality assurance and publishing approaches. So inclusivity is a key dimension of both social justice and sustainability in that multiple voices are required in order to achieve more equal epistemic representation. So I work with open textbooks, began with this framing of social justice and making for us a very important argument around the importance in the role of open textbooks. And as we were doing this we realized that authors approached producing textbooks in very different ways. And we thought it would be particularly useful to start thinking about open textbook models so that if new authors are interested in taking on this work they can have a look at these models and start thinking about just how they would like to collaborate with others or collaborate with students to produce open textbooks. And so we came up with these four models, kind of moving from top to bottom with sort of less engagement in the participatory engagement model. I'll explain all of this in a moment. A little bit more in the second one with some co-creation. The third model being a co-creation model with students and the fourth being a co-creation and partnership model. And I'm going to explain what this all means now. So we were very fortunate to be able to use the work of Buvel. Catherine Buvel has been working in this area for many years and is known as an expert in this area. And she's from the University of Edinburgh. And she came up with this framework of inclusion which we have used to identify our different models. So she talks about participatory design as where students are kind of testers or informants around curriculum change and content. So not a high level of agency. Then there's engagement where there are activities to motivate and interest students. So we know about this kind of engagement as educators, so important to bring students into the teaching and learning process. And then she talks about partnership. And in the sort of continuum, partnership is the most collaborative approach where everyone participates equally. And there is not only kind of a thought process around content but also around conceptualization and decision making. So those are three categories. She also has co-creation. And co-creation is actually situated just before partnership. So not quite as equal. And then within co-creation she breaks these down into these different sections. So co-creation is about empowerment, meaningful engagement, students construct understanding. And then she has these categories where she has a representative, which is a small group, a consultant where a student is actually paid, a co-researcher where students collaboratively collaborate meaningfully, and a co-designer where the students are actually responsible for some of the designing of teaching and learning including assessment. So now I'd like to talk about some new findings. So this is very early work. This is preliminary but some really interesting aspects that are coming out from this new work that we're doing. And we really are now focusing on this particular area always embedded in social justice and the principles of open justice, social justice but now looking at open textbooks and students as partners. And we're looking at interviewing three authors now. And these are their models. So author one has done amazing work with students, co-researchers, co-designers, representatives and a small group and consultants. So actually paid these students to do the work. Even in the quality assurance there was participatory design involvement. Then author two and author three have a kind of similar pattern, co-creation, co-researcher for author two and then author three, co-creation, co-designer and representative. They both had engagement in quality assurance. So this is our current focus. These three authors, the author one had three students, one with Drew, one student was working on designing quizzes for an open chapter and another was looking at the technical platform. Author two had various levels but included the whole class participation plus tutors plus some co-teaching, so various levels. Author three had students that made videos as part of an assignment but also wrote chapters and he invited the whole class but not everyone became a co-creator. And so these are just some early quotes that are really fascinating from these authors. So we asked them how do academics experience working with students in open textbook production and what are the benefits. So author one, overall positive. The experience was fairly freeform with a kind of hands-off approach. The benefits, so second and third year students were taken on. And author one says you have a positive impact to play within the department to the students. I think that in and of itself is a very powerful thing. So I think for me the fact that we say we are these sort of lofty academics say hey, we need you. You have a real role to play here to improve things, something that we are unable to do. Author two says it has been satisfying because the students respond really well to the idea. I wouldn't be able to do this work if it wasn't for the students. And as we know with author two she used the whole class at the same level and she felt it was important to involve all of them at the same level because what she got out of it was such rich work. Author three, it's fantastic. It's very interesting. And this I think is really interesting. This author felt that the students were actually mentoring him. He was learning from the students because he says they are on a completely different frequency. And he learned that he needed to keep up with their pace and felt that this is really an interaction that should be ongoing and dynamic. What were the challenges? Well the challenges were definitely around time. And author one kind of intuitively says the workload of students is enormous. So we really have to be careful to strike a balance when we're asking students to co-create with us. One of the students that he asked didn't contribute and asked was that a challenge? And for him it felt that they were just like the normal bumps along the road that one expects. Group work is always challenging. That was one of the comments and time pressures on students. And then we asked authors was it difficult for you to step back from traditional roles, traditional roles of authority over students. First author said no not really. Give them complete control. That's better to do that than to try and hold the reins. And then he says I'm always here if you want to talk but you know. I think you know you have what it takes. Was it too? No not really. Because I've been kind of working in this area for a long time. And then interestingly shares that some of her colleagues think she's a control freak but she likes to put a structure in place. And that worked really well for her with including the whole class where she actually set up a structure to help them. So that actually worked for her in this particular case. And then the third author said challenge was not to step back. He didn't feel he stepped back. He really wanted to get buy in from his students. And was very honest and said just my only fear that by giving up authorship of chapters you're obviously handing it over to the students and saying write something. And by doing that you might actually slow down the process quite a bit and you don't know how the students going to write. Another question which is very important is what values or attitudes to academics and students need to have to work as collaborative partners. Author one feels that he would like to include excellent students that have mastered the material. And this was quite a long discussion in the interview where he said it wasn't always the case that they had to be the best students. In this case it was. And there are opportunities for all different students to co-create. But for this particular example he had these great students who he gave freedom to work. And he says I think the academic needs to respect that independence and creativity of the students. And he also felt that anybody who takes on this work has to have these sorts of values. This belief that students have what it takes. Author two, enthusiasm for the material and the subject matter that will inspire students. A generosity of spirit. So the students need to not only worry about their credit values or their marks, they really need to be passionate about the work. And what happens is a community of like-minded peers are formed. One of her students said that this was the most significant course for her because it gave her so much that she could use elsewhere. And then very interestingly, author three, curiosity on both sides but also equality in terms of how you see the other person. So you can't force collaboration. So his attitude was do you want to come and do this with me? That's what co-creation is about. And then the final question was would you do this again? And here the first author who was in mathematics said if he had more time, didn't have enough time, didn't have the resources. And he said he would really like to be helping students with writing mathematics. So in his case, his students did assessments and quizzes and more of the technical work and not so much the writing. And he feels that that would be an area he would love to be working on in future. Author two, experience was absolutely amazing. It's the best thing that's happened to me at UCT. So interesting. And for her, the thing that comes out of this, don't try and do things alone. The best thing to do is to do them with other people. And it's been amazing. And author three very interestingly says, it's not something that goes quickly. So this is this time thing. Co-creation is not a quick fix. It's a longer journey to the end. And he says it should never end. Transformation is not like a finished line. Finished line is a continued thing. And just so the last word, also to author three, commenting on Boevel's framework, where we had those specific categories, he felt it's not siloed categories. There's fluidity between them. And there are steps actually. So you engage students, you bring them into participation with the goal being co-creation because that's going to have the most impact on student learning. But you can't count on all students being fully engaged. What's next for us? Well, we really want to get into the student experience. We really want to understand the injustices in the classroom. And we want to understand the students experience of not only co-authoring, but also using these materials. So that's our next step that we want to do. And I would like to just thank you on that note for listening to this presentation today.