Introduction

This Adaptation Guide provides much needed information on the why, what, and how of making changes to an openly licensed textbook and other open educational resources (OER). In other words, it addresses the “revise” and “remix” members of David Wiley’s “5 R’s of openness” club.

In addition to the cost to students, one of the biggest advantages of choosing an open textbook is it gives faculty the legal right to add to, adapt, or delete the content of the textbook to fit their specific course without obtaining permission from the copyright holder. This is possible because the copyright holder has already granted permission by releasing their work using an open — or Creative Commons — licence. This type of licence gives users permission to use and reuse, share, copy, retain and modify the textbook without consulting the author.

The term adaptation is commonly used to describe the process of making changes to an existing work. Though we can also replace “adapt” with revise, modify, alter, customize, or other synonym that describes the act of making a change.