Open educational resources (OER) are licensed to allow content to be freely and openly shared between everyone. Not only can OER increase access to content, it can also enable new opportunities for learning and creativity. Although students have contributed to OER textbooks in the past, this presentation presents the process and results from a large enrollment undergraduate course whose primary focus was student comprehensive and complete OER textbook creation.

In Fall 2018, students enrolled in a public health course were tasked with writing an OER textbook for the content in the course, while they were learning it. The original, primary reason for this task was that the content of the course would required students to purchase three different conventional textbooks. However, and in addition to the cost savings of focusing on an OER textbook, students also reported that the experience helped increase their confidence and helped the feel more engaged with the course materials.

At the start of the semester, students were taught the basics about OER and worked together to come up with which type of OER license as a class. Groups of four to five students were assigned a chapter that included objectives, headings, and possible resources. The groups had to create a group contract, work together, and complete the chapter so that the rest of the class could read it prior to the content being presented to the rest of the students in the class.

At the completion of the course, the students had successfully written around a 200 page textbook with 19 chapters, each detailing a core content component of the subject of the course. This presentation will discuss the setup of the project, how facilitation occurred, and the benefits of publishing with students. Survey results will be presented on students perceptions of the project, working in groups, and the value of OER. Also presented will be lessons learned and recommendations to faculty who wish to do the same in their courses.