Pressbooks is approved for academic use and is integrated with LMS.

What is Pressbooks?

Pressbooks is the platform used for open textbooks created and adapted at USask. It is also widely used at other institutions throughout North America. Instructors and students can view and interact with materials and activities within a Pressbooks project, and it can be used for student projects organized by the instructor.

What is the purpose of Pressbooks?

Pressbooks’ primary purpose is to create, modify, share, and interact with openly licensed learning materials. It can be used for:

  • instructors to create or adapt an open textbook,
  • students to contribute to the creation or adaptation of an open resource,
  • students to complete ungraded activities embedded within the resource.

Why use Pressbooks?

  • Pressbooks is an easy to use platform for learners to access educational resources for free and in a variety of formats (web, PDF, ePub, etc.).
  • Pressbooks enables instructors to create or adapt existing open educational resources for use in their courses.
  • Pressbooks enables instructors to have students collaborate on or create learning materials as part of the learning process.
  • Pressbooks allows for embedding interactive components such as H5P for use as formative assessment.

Learning Technology Ecosystem (LTE) Principles

Pressbooks most directly addresses these LTE goals: 

Designed for reflection and growth - Learning is refined and extended through prompted and supported opportunities to focus on understanding and next steps.  

Designed for students who are remixing or creating - Learning is most effective when systems are designed to help learners find, create, and/or repurpose significant content for the value of themselves and others. 

 

Best Practices

DO

DON'T

Refer to the Pressbooks User's Guide (BC campus Edition)

Not intended for synchronous class activities.

Use to create a new or adapt existing open textbooks

Does not include a tool for annotation; exported versions (web, PDF, etc.) can be annotated using third party tools such as Perusall, an approved/integrated with Canvas.

 Use for sharing openly licensed content

 

 Use for collaborative class projects

 

 Make resources created accessible. See the Open Education Accessibility Toolkit

 

Support for Pressbooks

Technical Support

(Why isn't this working?)

USask supported

Training Support

 (How do I learn to use this tool?)

USask supported

Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning Supported

Teaching Support

 (How do I teach with this tool?)

Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning Supported

Tool Evaluation

Technologies are evaluated based on their alignment with the Learning Technologies Ecosystem Principles.  Click to see explanations of each principle and a justification of the rating. You can also view a complete blank rubric to see more details or read about the assessment process.

Learning must be found easily at any time, and all learners and teachers have equitable access, regardless of culture, language, ability etc. 
More Information

Rating: Works well

  • Accessibility standards:
    • Meets accessibility guidelines and allows for materials created to be accessible.

  • Cost of use for USask students:
    • Free

  • Platform/device:
    • Can be used on any device. Export files in a variety of formats including html, PDF, ePub, and MOBI.

  • Offline Access:
    • Not for editing, but materials can be downloaded for offline viewing.

Learning is a process of meaning-making, constructed through learning with others, and as a part of an intentional, deliberate system within a course and across experiences.
More Information

Rating: Works well

  • Collaboration:
    • Pressbooks allows for collaboration on projects.

  • Sharing:
    • Materials can be shared in a variety of formats and with several options for licensing and availability

Learning is refined and extended through prompted and supported opportunities to focus on understanding and next steps.
More Information

Rating: Works well

  • Reflection and revision:
    • Instructors can view changes made by individual students.
    • With proper permissions users can modify any content within Pressbooks.

Learning is most effective when systems are designed to help learners find, create, and/or repurpose significant content for the value of themselves and others.
More Information

Rating:

  • Creating:
    • Pressbooks provides an easy to use platform for the creation or remixing of learning materials, such as open textbooks.

  • File format:
    • Materials can be exported in a variety of formats including html, PDF, MOBI, and ePub.

Learners create and control spaces for learning, understanding and retaining ownership, and purposefully choosing how and when they share.
More Information

Rating: Works well

  • Archiving, saving, and exporting data:
    • Any public Pressbooks book can be downloaded as html, PDF, ePub, MOBI or cloned to be used on another instance of Pressbooks Pressbooks is an open source tool that can be installed for free on a server of the users choosing.
    • Creators / remixers of work in Pressbooks can choose which license they would like applied to the materials, (copyrighted or one of the open Creative Commons licenses), with that license being noted in the book.

  • Sign Up/Sign In:
    • To view public materials, no sign-in is required.
    • To edit materials, sign-in can be either directly through openpress.usask.ca or through Canvas if the integration is being used.

Learners need to work in a system that is fluid and requires a minimum number of steps in systems that are intuitive and integrated.
More Information

Rating: Works well

  • Interface:
    • Pressbooks is an easy to use platform that doesn’t require any knowledge of coding or design to create materials.

  • Additional Downloads:
    • Any public Pressbook’s book can be downloaded as html, PDF, ePub, MOBI or cloned to be used on another instance of Pressbooks (Pressbooks is an open source tool that can be installed for free on a server of the users choosing).

Learners exist in accessible networks, and connect to the experiences, concepts, people, and ideas that they need.
More Information

Rating: Moderate Concerns

  • Scale:
    • Number of users viewing the materials is not limited.
    • Number of users editing materials is not limited
  • Flexibility of Media:
    • In addition to text, images and videos can be added to projects in Pressbooks.
    • H5P can be used to create formative assessments (no marks).
  • Engagement
    • While an unlimited number of users can view the materials at the same time, only one user can be editing a page at the same time.

Learning and feedback are iterative, and assessment comes from multiple sources, including self, peers, teachers, and outside experts.
More Information

Rating: Moderate concerns

  • Feedback:
    • No ability for direct feedback, however, the public nature of a published version allows for a wide audience to provide feedback.