Abstract
Student creation of educational materials has the capacity both to enhance learning and to decrease costs. Three successive honors-style classes of undergraduate students in a cancer genetics class worked with a new software system, CuboCube, to create an e-textbook. CuboCube is an open-source learning materials creation system designed to facilitate e-textbook development, with an ultimate goal of improving the social learning experience for students. Equipped with crowdsourcing capabilities, CuboCube provides intuitive tools for nontechnical and technical authors alike to create content together in a structured manner. The process of e-textbook development revealed both strengths and challenges of the approach, which can inform future efforts. Both the CuboCube platform and the Cancer Genetics E-textbook are freely available to the community.
Highlights
The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement is a global revolution towards accessible, high-quality education worldwide
The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
The effort affirms the capacity of a structured group-sourced project to create free textbooks and suggests that coordinated global efforts could accelerate the development of quality OER e-textbooks
Summary
The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement is a global revolution towards accessible, high-quality education worldwide. To contribute to the OER movement and to demonstrate the use of an open-access platform towards the creation of OER, we first developed an online textbook creation platform, CuboCube, and student authors tested and assessed the system by creating an e-textbook. The system was developed to replace a Wikipedia-based social learning component of an advanced cancer genetics course (Medical Genetics [MEDG] 421) at the University of British Columbia.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
