Open Educational Resources (OER)

Red Deer Polytechnic Library is a participating institution in the Open Education Alberta initiative, a collaborative, no-fee publishing service for open textbooks and other OER. This gives RDP faculty and staff access to the Pressbooks publishing platform, which can be used to adapt existing open textbooks to the needs of students or to create new openly licensed resources.

Pressbooks is a Canadian-based book publishing tool that can be used to create, adapt, and publish open books. Authors can copy existing open books and adapt them to their own context, or create new openly licensed books.

Here are examples of open books published using Pressbooks:

• Geological Structures: A Practical Introduction
• Português para principiantes (language-learning book with embedded sound clips and embedded activities)
• Research Methods in Psychology, 2nd Canadian Edition (example of a book adapted from an existing US version)
• Environmental ScienceBites (example of a project involving student authors)

Who can request an account?

Any member of the Red Deer Polytechnic community (faculty, staff, students) can request a Pressbooks account. You must have a proposed book project in order to be issued an account.

How do I request an account?

Complete the Pressbooks Account Request form below to initiate the request. You will be contacted by a Librarian who will outline the features of Pressbooks and your responsibilities as a Pressbooks User. All users must sign and agree to the terms of the publishing agreement before an account will be issued.