What is the Open Textbook Planner?

Editoria is designed to support mutiple workflows. The Open Textbook Planner, aimed at communities that produce open education resources (OER), was developed in colloboration with the Open Education Network (OEN) and is currently being piloted with the OEN.

The Open Textbook Planner is a step-by-step guided tool for building a textbook in Editoria and can be enabled on any Editoria instance at set up. With the Open Textbook Planner you can develop a consistent structure for your textbook before you start the authoring process. There are four steps to creating your textbook’s structure:

1. Determine structure

2. Outline content

3. Add pedagogical elements

4. Review

Roles supported

The supported user types are:

• Administrators: used by staff who have ultimate responsibility for the Editoria instance.

• Global Production Editors: used by staff to create books and assign Production Editors.

• Production Editors: used by the project manager of the book and anyone who wants to work on the book at all stages.

• Copy Editors: who can make tracked changes at the Edit stage.

• Authors: who can review changes, make comments, and suggest changes, at the Review stage.

Getting started with the Open Textbook Planner

1. Users sign up for the instance. Note: the instance must be configured at set up to enable the Open Textbook Planner.

2. The Global Production Editor creates a book and adds its title (it can be changed later).

3. The Production Editor creates an account.

4. The Global Production Editor assigns one or more Production Editors to the book via the Assign Members button on the right of the book name on the Book Dash. Other users can be added at any stage but a Production Editor should be assigned once the book is created, to proceed with the planning of the book.

5. The Production Editor logs into the instance, and can see the book on the Book Dash.

6. The Production Editor selects Plan Book (to the right of the book title).

7. The Production Editor should now see the Welcome screen of the Open Textbook Planner and should select Start.

The next chapter will guide you through using the Planner.