New Interactive OER Being Developed for Calculus With LibreTexts

Professor Larry Green from Lake Tahoe Community College is no stranger to OER. He believes in taking full advantage of any opportunity to create textbooks of the future for his courses by utilizing technologies that didn’t exist when the “traditional” textbook was invented decades ago by using videos, visualizations, and games to create more engaging and interactive content for his students. Along these lines he has created an interactive, enhanced Statistics book using the OpenStax Introductory Statistics textbook as his guide. Because both the OpenStax book and his interactive elements are openly licensed, they can be seamlessly integrated with one another. He has also created an online elementary statistics calculator using LibreTexts to provide his students an alternative to purchasing expensive graphing calculators required for statistics courses. 

Dr. Green’s next project involves taking all three OpenStax Calculus texts and enhancing them in the same way he did for his Statistics text: by using videos, visualizations (using Paul Seeburger's CalcPlot3D), interactive assessments (using MyOpenMath), and games (written with javascript) to encourage students to more closely interact with the course content. For example, one of the games he plans to create asks the students to throw something into the air, a ball for example, while using calculus to guide it along its journey; upon the completion the students will receive a score based on how well they used calculus equations to play. He plans to have all three texts ready for general use by the end of the year. 

For additional information on his work with open educational resources, check out Dr. Green’s website, as well as his YouTube channel. He can be reached at drLarryGreen@gmail.com.