Abstract

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the availability of open educational resources, allowing instructors to select from various free online materials for statistics education (particularly for general introductory statistics courses). For such resources, there are various licenses that authors may select for sharing their work, including relatively permissive ones that allow for open adaptation of materials by others.

Why does open adaptation matter? One reason is that it lowers the barriers to entry for new authors. Drawing on personal experience, this presentation describes how the ability to contextualize and adapt existing resources for one’s own teaching can serve as a catalyst to original authorship. Given how daunting the prospect of authoring an entire textbook can be to a new author, an attractive on-ramp to authorship consists of writing individual chapters or sections that can fit into an existing open educational resource. Through this experience of small-stakes authoring, one can build experience and confidence to take on larger projects such as authoring an entire text. The final result is an expansion of the resources available to instructors and students, since barriers to entry for new authors are lowered.

Sharing stories of successful adaption is important for multiple reasons. First, it can serve to encourage authors to adopt permissive licenses that allow for open adaptation. Second, it can serve to inspire new authors to try adapting existing works.