Vetting
In Utah, school districts make their own decisions in evaluating instructional materials, and may consult the state’s general list of approved materials. In Nebo, Utah, textbook adoption is even more decentralized, with each high school selecting their own textbook and/or instructional materials. Representatives from each high school meet to evaluate the available instructional materials. Ideally, the same courses within the district would use the same textbook, however, each individual school is responsible for funding their acquisition of textbooks/instructional materials, so the schools makes the final decision.
The Open Textbook Project envisioned a district paying its best teachers to work together revising and adapting the initial open textbook to meet specific needs. This custom book would contain a teacher’s edition, instructional supports, explanations, text, practice sets, and assessments. Each summer teachers would invest a small amount of additional time to update the book as needed.
For the first iteration of the OER chemistry and biology materials, teachers primarily used the content available on the CK-12 platform. The CK-12 website has free open source K-12 materials that can be modified and mixed, as needed. The content was contained in flexbooks, where teachers selected specific chapters and content to include in the OER materials.
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Local Choice
Each school in Nebo school district makes their own decisions for textbook/instructional materials adoption.
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Review Process
Each summer, teams of district teachers meet to update the OER materials; constantly adding additional resources and images, including student feedback. During this process, reviewers target areas where students are struggling or where they have misconceptions. In addition, specific textbooks were edited to meet the expectations of concurrent enrollment courses at Utah Valley University.