From Burden to Breakthrough: Rapid and Collaborative Open Textbook Creation

Abstract

This interactive session will invite audiences to critically think about their use and perception of course materials as presenters explore open educational resources (OER), writing sprints, and collaborative authorship through the experiences of the 2025-26 VIVA Rapid Publishing Program. This approach incorporates institutional support-including week-long in-person facilitation, instructional design, copyright and publishing expertise, and hospitality-in an effort to leverage the benefits of collaboration and reduce faculty burdens for authoring OER. Through the guidance of panelists, attendees will begin to explore what course materials actually benefit them and their students and potential avenues of support to reach those ideals. Open Educational Resources (OER)(1), including open textbooks, are used by 33% of higher education faculty. They are increasingly selected because of their equal or better student learning outcomes (in contrast to commercial course materials), zero-cost access, unrestricted redistribution and opportunities to customize for individual classes and implement innovative pedagogies (Elder, 2019; Cozart et. al., 2021; Seaman & Seaman, 2025). Although using OER saves faculty significant effort, gaps in available disciplinary resources generate an additional burden to create new materials. And while OER are often lauded as “free,” this minimizes the extensive efforts required to create them. While some faculty author OER independently (Burnett, 2025; Guzman & Woolley, 2021; Marsh et al., 2022), an increasing number of OER programs provide authorship compensation; some also provide support structures similar to traditional book publishers (Walz et. al, 2016; Santiago & Rey, 2020). To help overcome the OER authorship burden at its 70 institutions, VIVA, Virginia’s Academic Library Consortium, established the Rapid Publishing Program (VIVA, n.d.). This program builds on prior collaborative writing sprint models (Book Sprints Limited, n.d.; Baker et al., 2014; Jhanghiani et al., 2016). After identifying a gap in OER in an area of high need for Virginia higher education, VIVA forms a multi-institutional team of faculty instructor/subject-matter experts to author the text and librarians and instructional designers to instruct, provide framing, and support authorship. VIVA provides funding, infrastructure, and program coordination for authorship, review, production, and outreach. Authorship is viewed from a connectivist lens, leveraging multiple preparatory online sessions to plan features and content of the resource (Maawali, 2022; Tham et al., 2021). During a week-long, in-person structured writing sprint, authors establish and refine shared understanding of the task (Vygotsky, 1978), write in teams, offer constructive feedback, and create a first draft of the text. This interactive session will invite audiences to critically think about their use and perception of course materials as presenters explore OER, writing sprints, and collaborative authorship through the experiences of the 2025-26 VIVA Rapid Publishing Program. This program gathered 7 faculty and 3 librarians to author an introductory leadership studies textbook during Summer 2025. Project librarians will share the program’s planning and organizational framework and lessons learned. The participating faculty will describe their experience and accomplishments, as well as reflect on benefits and challenges. Faculty will discuss how programs such as the Rapid Publishing Program 1) provide value through structured writing, review, and management of ongoing editorial and production services, 2) enable instructors to reach their goal of drafting an open textbook in five days, and 3) expand instructors’ thinking about teaching, design of teaching resources, and consideration for use of OER. Audience engagement will be included throughout the session and ample time will be reserved for audience Q&A. Footnotes (1) "[OER are] learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others” (UNESCO, 2019) Reference List Baker, R., Berry, D., Brokering, M., Dieter, M., French, A., & Ruhling, B. (2014). On Book Sprints v1.1. http://data.booksprints.net/books/On_Book_Sprints_v1_1.pdf Book Sprints Limited. (n.d.). Booksprints. OER World Map. https://oerworldmap.org/resource/urn%3Auuid%3A0dc55f0f-5467-466c-9047-8c07b129346d Burnett, M. (2025). Publishing OER on a shoestring: Manifold to the rescue. Iowa OER listserv. (February 4, 2025) https://web.archive.org/web/20250902193257/https://groups.google.com/g/iowa-oer/c/GOvBLBs3T5Q Elder, A. (2019). OER starter kit. Iowa State University Digital Press. https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/oerstarterkit/ Cozart, D. L., Horan, E. M., & Frome, G. (2021). Rethinking the traditional textbook: A case for open educational resources (OER) and no-cost learning materials. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 9(2). https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.9.2.13 Guzman, I., & Woolley, S. (2021). A shoestring grassroots approach to publishing an open educational resource engineering textbook. 2021 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Meeting Proceedings. https://peer.asee.org/a-shoestring-grassroots-approach-to-publishing-an-open-educational-resource-engineering-textbook Jhangiani, R., Green, A. G., & Belshaw, J. (2016). Three approaches to open textbook development. In P. Blessinger & T. J. Bliss (Eds.), Open education: International perspectives in higher education (pp. 178-198). Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0103 Maawali, W. (2022). Experiential writing through connectivism learning theory: A case study of English language students in Oman higher education. Reflective Practice, 23(3), 305-318. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2021.2021167 Marsh, C., Marsh, J., & Chesnutt, K. (2022). Exploring OER as a mediator for equity gaps in student course success rates for introductory biology courses in the NCCCS. North Carolina Community College Journal of Teaching Innovation, 6-12. https://www.ncccfa.org/_files/ugd/40c3b6_3309827827f24f9a9d14574282b848aa.pdf Santiago, A., & Ray, L. (2020). Navigating support models for OER publishing: Case studies from the University of Houston and the University of Washington. Reference Services Review, 48(3), 397-413. https://doi.org/10.1108/RSR-03-2020-0019 Seaman, J. E., & Seaman, J. (2025). Deeply digital: Educational resources in higher education. Bayview Analytics. https://www.bayviewanalytics.com/reports/deeplydigital2025.pdf Tham, J., Duin, A., Veeramoothoo, S., & Fuglsby, B. (2021). Connectivism for writing pedagogy: Strategic networked approaches to promote international collaborations and intercultural learning. Computers and Composition, 60, 102643. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2021.102643 UNESCO. (2019). Open educational resources. https://www.unesco.org/en/open-educational-resources VIVA. (n.d.). VIVA rapid publishing program. VIVA Publishing. https://vivalib.org/va/open/publishing Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press. Walz, A., Jensen, K., & Salem, J. A., Jr. (2016). SPEC Kit 315: Affordable course content and open educational resources. Association of Research Libraries. https://publications.arl.org/Affordable-Course-Content-Open-Educational-Resources-SPEC-Kit-351