In addition to the textbook and OER repositories listed in this guide, supplementary open content in the form of images, videos, audio, and text can be incorporated into your open textbook to enhance student learning.

See the tab above for details about Creative Commons Licenses.

When adapting or developing your own open textbook, you have complete freedom on how to accomplish this. Open textbooks can take the form of a static text document (PDF), or dynamic text that is adaptable to a navigable webpage with media content (ie. audio and/or video).

Some considerations to make as you develop a workflow for writing and formatting your OER.

• Modularity: Open textbooks in particular should be modular in design. Modular design will enable those wanting to adopt and adapt the content to their needs to do so more easily. Modular design will also better facilitate a dynamic web document.
• Collaborative Approach: Creating an open textbook from scratch is a huge undertaking. You may not be approaching it alone. Consider developing your material in an collaborative environment (ie. Google Docs, Microsoft Office 365, etc.) so that multiple users can access, edit, and review documents. The collaboration stage may also come later when you are getting ready to distribute your open textbook.
• Accessibility: Consider the various needs of potential readers and users. For any multimedia you include in your text, strive to include alt text that clearly describes the content to vision or hearing impaired users. Consult the Open Text BC accessibility toolkit.