1. Shawna M. Brandle Kingsborough Community College Adventures in Compatibility: My C3IRG Experience So Far

2. The Challenge: To Build a Better Book Can we leverage open educational resources (OER) and technology to make Intro to American Government more interesting, and more useful for students?

3. The Crazy Cost of Textbooks

4. Which is extra hard for our students Recent studies estimate the cost of required books and supplies at $1200/year. As of 2014, 65% of CUNY CC students come from households that make less than $30,000/year

5. US Government Textbooks are not just expensive, they’re also Long! Boring! Predigested! Ineffective!

6. Research Design Teach “control” and “experimental” sections of the same class as identically as possible on both campuses, using a free digital textbook (Lenz & Holman American Government) in control and a multimedia book of original sources and OERs, to measure student performance and student preferences.

7. Compatibility Issues Cause Slow-Down Different approach to the class than co-PI IRB Ideate is not really Mac-compatible Making a digital book that is fully functional across multiple platforms But time heals most wounds...

8. Longer Time Frame Allowed for: More reflection of pedagogical approach – creation of guiding questions For the scheduling of additional sections of American Government For iBooks Author to include an ePub output For consultation on readings with other professors

9. The Results So Far Observation Some students reluctant to participate in research Few Apple students/few tablet/laptop students Many students enjoy videos- great for students who miss class/want to repeat videos Reaction Increasing number of sections in study yields a big enough n to actually evaluate the sourcebook Designing sourcebook to be printing and device compatible – Phablet-friendliness Incorporating YouTube videos in sourcebook