As you know, the textbook we’ve been using this semester, Reading and Writing Successfully in College (RWS), is an open education textbook that I developed. In this assignment, I’m asking you to help me improve the book for students just like you in the future.

For this project, you will work with a small group of your classmates to choose a section of RWS to revise and augment. You will then write an individual reflection on your experiences with this project.

During this unit, you’ll learn about writing for a real public audience (you are reading material revised by other students, too!). You’ll also learn about Open Education Resources, Creative Commons licensing, and copyright, as well as a bit about accessibility in publishing.

Part 1: Team Contributions

Choosing a Section

Your team will choose either a chapter or a part of a chapter if the chapter is long. You should choose a section that you believe you could make stronger and that all of you are interested in working on.

You must also choose a section that hasn’t already been worked on by other students. You can tell if a section has been worked on by former students by looking at the end of the chapter. If they have, you’ll see a note about their assistance under “Text Attributions” at the end of the chapter. Look at the end of the chapter on Proofreading for an example.

No two groups will be allowed to work on the same section. By the end of the first class period in this unit, you should have settled on a selection, and I’ll check in with you then.

Contributing to RWS

In contributing to this text, you should be thinking about the students who will next use this textbook in a course like ours. What would most help them to understand the ideas? What would encourage them to read the text carefully? What would help them practice the skills explained in the book?

Required Contributions

For an A on this project, your group must contribute the following:

• Two Visuals: At least two appropriately licensed visuals for their chapter with appropriate alt-text. We will talk about what that means in class. Visuals can be photographs or drawings, but they can also be diagrams or infographics or screenshots. You can either create these yourself or find them online.
• One Textbox: One example, pullout, or activity — something that would be appropriate for one of the textboxes (the purple, teal, or orange boxes in the text).

Optional Contributions

There are multiple other contributions your group can make:

• Revise the writing in the section
• Locate new outside resources and link them
• Identify words that could use definition (and provide those definitions)
• Create links between sections that aren’t already there

Don’t feel limited by the lists I’ve created. If you can think of something that would strengthen this textbook, please include it!

Your Contributions and Permissions

RWS is an open education resource (OER), which means that the content of the book is freely shareable and editable, as long as the user gives me credit for my work and does not change the licensing that I have assigned to this project.

Because RWS is an OER, all material in the book needs to be licensed appropriately. During this unit, you’ll learn what that means, but I will require that everything you submit be licensed so that I could use it, assuming that you give me permission and that I choose to use it.

Work Done by Others

You may decide to submit work that has been done by others. You could, for example, choose images from Unsplash, a collection of photos that are Creative Commons licensed. You could also choose an activity from a source like OER Commons or MERLOT for me to incorporate.

Any contributions by others must be licensed under Creative Commons in a way that I can use them before I could add them to the book. Again, you’ll learn what this means during this unit.

Giving Permission

Some of what your team creates may be of your own design. For instance, you may take photographs of your own to add to the text, or you may develop examples that are from your own writing and experiences in this class or in others. You may create an infographic or diagram. These creations are yours.

While I would like the option to use what you submit, I will only do that if you give me permission. I will ask (but not require) that you give me permission to incorporate your material into the text. I will provide a form for your team to complete and submit with your contributions that lets me know whether you are willing for me to use your material.

If you choose not to give me permission, I will not use your work in the textbook, but it will still count toward your grade for this unit. Permission is not required.

Revisions

In addition to adding images and such to the text, your team might choose to revise the text itself. You could, for example, provide a longer explanation of a concept — or a shorter one. You could make some of the language clearer or more accessible for students like you. You could update some of my explanations based on work you have done during the semester.

Revisions like this are welcome. I am doing my best to write a textbook for students, but I am not a student. I do not want you to hesitate to revise something because you are worried that I will be offended. I won’t be. Honestly, I’ll be honored that you care enough about the material to try to make it better. Please do!

If you are giving me permission to use the revisions you make and your revisions are incorporated into the book, they will need to have a compatible Creative Commons license. Again, we’ll talk more about what that means in class.

My Choice and Your Attribution

I am retaining authorship of this project, so ultimately the choice of whether to include your contributions or not will rest with me. If you give me permission and I choose to use the submissions, I will give you credit for your work; that is, I will attribute the work to you in RWS. I will also let you know my decision.

If you do not choose to give me permission, you will still get credit for this work in this class; I just won’t add that work to RWS.

Part 2: Individual Reflection

Your team will make decisions about changes to the section you’ve chosen together, but I also want to hear from you individually about your experiences with this project. So in addition to submitting your team’s contributions, I am asking each of you to submit a reflection (300-500 words) on your experiences working on this project. The specifics of this reflection are up to you, but here are some questions you might consider:

• What did you learn as you worked on this project?
• What was your experience with your teammates? What worked well? What could have worked better?
• What contributions are you most proud of? Most unsure of? Why?

Remember that these questions are just ideas. You are not required to answer these, and you may choose to reflect on something different. The only requirement is that you write specifically about your experiences with this project, not with the textbook as a whole or the course or something else. If you choose to write about something else or you don’t meet the minimum word count, you may not get full credit for this part of the project.

Grading for this unit will work a little differently, since this is a team project, and I am not setting homework and peer response assignments (though you may choose to do so).

The grade for this unit is based on the number and type of contributions your team makes, as well as the focus of your own reflection. Please note that this assignment is not an invitation simply to add comments and make suggestions, like I have done on your papers. Instead, this assignment asks you to actually create a final-ish version of the chapter, with copies of any assets (such as photographs or infographics) and URL links to material not created by your group.

Required Contributions

Each submission must meet all of the requirements in order for your group to get credit. Partial credit will not be given.

Visuals

You are required to submit a minimum of two visuals.

3 points = Infographics, diagrams, and other visuals that you have created.

1 point = Photographs, screenshots, memes*, videos**, and other visuals created by others or that require minimal work on your part to prepare for this project.

Your visuals will only be accepted if they also meet the following requirements:

• If they are not your creation, they must be licensed under a compatible Creative Commons license.
• They must include alt-text.

For each visual, please submit the following:

• The visual file in a PNG, GIF, or JPG format.
• A word processing file (DOCX, ODT, or RTF) including the alt-text and any extra information.
• A link to the original source (if not of your own creation).
• Information about how you would like the attribution to appear (if the visual is of your own creation).

* A word of warning about memes: Be sure that the image used for the meme is one that is properly licensed. Many meme generators do not pay attention to the image licensing.

** Because of file storage concerns, the only videos that can be accepted are those (with proper licensing) available on YouTube or other video platform that doesn’t require a login.

Textboxes

You are required to submit a minimum of one textbox.

3 points = Textboxes that introduce new ideas, examples, and/or activities that your group creates.

1 point = Textboxes that rely on material created by others.

These must include the following:

• A title that includes what kind of textbox you have (Example, Activity, Pullout) and identifies the content.
• All material (that isn’t your own) cited properly in the text with a properly formatted Works Cited list.
• Links for any material that isn’t of your own creation.

For each textbox, please submit the following:

• A link to the original source (if not of your own creation)
• The content of the textbox, including citations, in a DOCX, ODT, or RTF format.

Note that there may be overlap with the textbox creation and the visuals: you could create a textbox that includes visuals. If you do this, you should make sure that information about which visual should be included in the textbox is clear to me.

Optional Contributions

These are additional contributions that your group could make to the text.

2 points = Large contributions that add something substantial to the text. The only example I can think of is revising a large section of the text in substantial way, but you may come up with something I haven’t thought of.

0.25 points = Small contributions that make very little change in the text (though they may still be helpful!). Here are some examples:

• Adding a definition of a term that students are not likely to understand.
• Editing a sentence to make it stronger or clearer.
• Adding small design elements, such as bolding.

Keep in mind that the only contributions that will “count” are ones that are have appropriate licensing.

Reflection

Your team grade will be the same for all members of your team, but your reflection counts separately just for you. Your reflection can add up to one additional point, as follows:

1 point = a reflection that meets the length requirement and that is focused on your experiences with this project, as directed in the assignment.

0.5 point = a reflection that meets the length requirement and that is focused on the course or the textbook generally, but not on the project specifically.

0 points = a reflection focused on something else, or a reflection that doesn’t meet the length requirement, or no reflection at all.

Here’s an example of how the reflection grading will work, if your group generates 9 points worth of contributions and you write a 400-word reflection that focuses on your experiences with this project, your total points for this project will be 10. If you are part of a three-person team, that’s an A. If you are part of a four-person team, that’s a B.