Office Hours: Writing Math and Science Textbooks
Channel: Open Education Network
Date: 2020-12-01

The special guests at this month's session of the Rebus Community and Open Education Network Office Hours were Oscar Levin (Associate Professor, School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Northern Colorado), Delmar Larsen (Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Davis; Founder and Director, LibreTexts Project), and Amy M. Balija (Assistant Professor, Organic Chemistry, Radford University).

In this Office Hours session, we talked about how writing and publishing math and science open textbooks, lab manuals, and other related ancillaries usually involves a unique set of challenges. Our guests discussed their experience creating math and science textbooks on a variety of publishing platforms and tools including Pressbooks, LaTeX, and LibreTexts. Topics included how to add formula, create interactivity through PhET or H5P simulations, and ensure accessibility. This session provides an overview of the tradeoffs between platforms and a discussion of strategies for creating math and science open textbooks that meets author and student expectations.

The audio and chat transcripts of this session are available on the Open Education Network website: https://open.umn.edu/oen/2020/11/30/nov20-office-hours/