Hello, Trainers! (Pressbooks Administrators Start Here)
Thank you for being interested in borrowing this training. I hope you find it useful!
Pedagogical Considerations
As you’ve probably already noticed, this training resource bears a silly name, a nod to Boaty McBoatface. This sense of play, and the title’s conspiratorial wink to the internet more generally, propels this so-called “training.” Instead of structured lessons, this “training” is far more akin to providing a safe, exploratory sandbox.
Rather than telling participants where to click and how, this “training” acknowledges that the editor built into Pressbooks is used in many other places across the internet. Although few editors will know TinyMCE by name, they’ll likely recognize its icons and overall “feel.”
By trusting participants to apply their hard-won prior knowledge from other online spaces, this training encourages their agency and voice. The reliance on authentic, active learning also seeks to diminish any tendency to ask Pressbooks administrators for permission, a potential that not only could rob editors of their ownership, but also delay the book’s production and put administrators into an uncomfortable situation of spending time as gatekeeper or bottleneck, instead of coach or colleague.
Privacy Considerations
Participants may feel reluctant to provide details about themselves online—and these boundaries should be respected!
Each time I’ve done this training, I’ve assured the participants that the book won’t be made public, and that the only people who’ll see their introductions will be other editors. Although this template for the training is public and placed in the Pressbooks Directory, I strongly suggest that any copies have the most restrictive privacy settings possible. This will help keep participants focused on the audience only of their peers, not potentially the internet at large.
Here are the settings I recommend, all of which you can specify in the “Sharing and Privacy” section of the “Settings” menu:
- Book Visibility: Private.
- Private Content: Only logged in editors and administrators.
- Disable Comments: Yes.
- Share Latest Export Files: No.
- Pressbooks Directory: No.
Process Considerations
Copies, Titles, and an Adaptation
As the length of this page probably suggests, I’d be thrilled if you were to copy and use this at your institution! Please see Pressbooks’s own instructions on how to clone a book for a thorough explanation.
You know your institution and its communities best, so don’t be shy about naming your version something like “{{ Your Institution Name }} OER Sandbox” if you feel that’s more suitable for your needs.
I recommend creating at least two versions of this: one for use with students and another for use with faculty and staff. You might give these slightly different titles.
Knowing their digital introductions will only be visible to “their peers” will likely help each group feel more comfortable as they explore, try and possibly need to try again. This also means that you will likely want to have separate sessions for students than you do for faculty and staff. It will be easiest for students to attend if you do this training with the during their regular classtime, particularly if you are working with a class making renewable assignment projects like Beginnings and Endings: A Critical Edition, written by students in Liza Long’s English 211 Literary Analysis course.
I point this next detail out because it’s precisely what I know I would continually put off while adopting this, then kick myself during the training when I realize I’d never gotten around to changing it—you’ll almost certainly want to replace the words {{ PLACE ADMIN EMAIL HERE }} in the fourth paragraph of this shaded textbox. If this scenario sounds all too familiar and plausible, please go change that now, then come back!
Timing
Multiple sets of students, faculty, and staff have participated in sessions of this training. Each session has been hybrid or fully remote. It’s designed to be primarily synchronous, as it draws from the familiar model of community-building “icebreakers” and personal introductions. It’s usually taken about an hour, and sometimes a bit more when we have many participants who want to share what they’ve written.
To make this “introduction” model as authentic as possible, it’s advisable to save time for at least a few participants to share their digital introductions during the session. This will not only give participants incentive to jump right in, but will also give trainers a chance to provide feedback on how robustly the different introductions use Pressbooks’s structural elements, formatting, and accessibility features.
You’ll likely also want to begin with a short overview clarifying that the session will primarily be an active, hands-on tinkering session, not a “repeat after me”-style demonstration where they mimic what they’ve been shown, and that there will be time for a few participants to share their introductions at the end of the session. Depending on the available time, your own instructional style, and your knowledge of the participants’ confidence, you may want to have an example of a “finished” introduction ready at the beginning of the tutorial, you may want to create a minimal one as you briefly provide an overview, or you may want to just turn your participants loose after you offer to answer questions as they arise.
In any event, I highly recommend that you ask participants to register at least a day in advance. This will help ensure you have time to create an account for each participant, to create each person’s part, and perhaps even alphabetize them. Even if you can make accounts and parts for each participant at the beginning of your session, I doubt that’s an experience you’ll want them to associate with Pressbooks or OER more generally.
