U of R Pressbooks

In Summer 2020, the Open Educational Resource Publishing Program purchased an institutional subscription to the online publishing platform Pressbooks. Pressbooks is a book production software that enables the creation and distribution of open educational resources.

Product Highlights

This institutional network gives access to educational features, institutional branding, ongoing training for users across the institution and premium support for network managers. A Pressbooks network allows you to:

  • Showcase and distribute the collection of open textbooks and other resources the institution creates on an OER platform and a catalogue branded to the university
  • Create digital textbooks and course materials that can be made available to students free of charge and easily accessible online
  • Produce open textbooks in many digital formats and in print
  • Make engaging course content that incorporates embedded media, interactive content like H5P quizzes and more
  • Create open resources that follow best practices for accessible content development
  • Clone any openly licensed public webbook from another Pressbooks network directly into your own network to adapt, remix and redistribute it
  • Benefit from reliable network performance and security

 

Who is eligible to use Pressbooks?

 

Permanent and term-appointment faculty and academic staff members can request a user account to gain full access to Pressbooks by contacting the UR OER Publishing Program Manager Shuana Niessen at Open.Textbooks@uregina.ca.

If you are an APT staff member and if a Pressbooks user account would be helpful for your University projects, you may request a user account with your supervisor’s support. Your supervisor should contact the UR OER Program Manager to request an account on your behalf.

Graduate students are also eligible for a user account upon nomination by their faculty supervisor.

If you have questions about accessing and using Pressbooks, contact Open.Textbooks@uregina.ca.

 

What Pressbooks training supports are available?

 

To help account holders learn how to use Pressbooks effectively, there are several supports available.

  1. The OER Publishing Program hosts regular training sessions at least once each semester. These sessions are announced through the University’s Events mailing list.
  2. The following Pressbooks guides are available for reference:

  1. There are some other additional guides that faculty and staff could consult to create accessible open educational resources. They include:
  1. Finally, there are two specific resources that can be used to start searching for OER across subject areas:

 

We would like to thank the partner units, the Archer Library and the Centre for Continuing Education, for their contributions to this initiative. We would also like to acknowledge that the OER Publishing Program is supported by a grant from the Government of Saskatchewan.

To visit the University’s Pressbooks site, follow the link: https://opentextbooks.uregina.ca/