Flipping the book on Biology: Developing an interactive, open, online textbook to flip a large, lecture-based university course

The purpose of this general forum session will be to share a new, online, interactive, openly licensed Biology textbook. The textbook was designed and built through a partnership between the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Biology Department and the College of Education’s Distance Course Design and Consulting Group (DCDC). The textbook, originally released through Rice University’s OpenStax platform was customized in order to facilitate flipping the University of Hawaii’s introductory Biology course from a lecture-based, face-to-face class to a hybrid, active learning environment.

The session will focus on the new custom features of the textbook that allow students to interact with content and complete embedded, text and video-based H5P assessments within the textbook itself. Additional features to be highlighted include a new mobile-friendly theme, interactive practice activities, backend student data management, and the textbook’s multiple dashboards that provide analytics of aggregated data collected by the text for students and instructors to track progress in the book and course. The new online open text will be made freely available to students, replacing the expensive, hard copy text used in previous semesters.

Lessons learned from the textbook’s first semester rollout (Fall 2018) with 350 Biology students will be shared along with the initial results from a survey of these students regarding their experiences with the online textbook.

Session participants will be encouraged to ask questions and share their experiences with flipped learning and open, online textbooks.