LibreTexts, an Integrated System for Building Geoscience OER Textbooks

Abstract:

Libretexts unites students, and faculty to cooperatively develop totally free educational resources, providing materials that are easy to adopt and use, simple to optimize, and backed by educational research incorporating advanced technologies. Today the growing geoscience library (geo.libretexts.org) has about 20 books with additional ones designed for specific courses by instructors that substitute for costly conventional textbooks. These are assembled on the central server by combining content not only from geoscience but with an extensive network of content from across the curriculum including math, statistics physics chemistry and biology. They are available anywhere and to anybody both online and in print form. We will briefly discuss barriers to OER adoption and describe what LibreTexts offers to geoscience faculty and students. Our ReMixer provides drag and drop OER construction and automatic renumbering of equations, graphs, images and tables. This capability will be demonstrated online as will other features and participants will be able to explore using the ReMixer to build small geoscience texts. A new question system allows rapid integration of questions from test banks into the texts or as stand along homework or quizes and tests. Jupyter hubs integrate python, r, octave and sagemath computation within textbook pages. Other features include annotation (hypothes.is), 3D visualization and multimedia. LibreTexts supports import into LMSs using the common cartridge, print on demand, viewing on cell phones in remote locations and more. All LibreTexts OER is covered by CC-BY-NC-SA or less restrictive license and is free to access and use.