Spotlight on the OpenStax Microbiology Ancillary (OSMA) ADAPT Project 

Our ADAPT homework system is in the spotlight this month as a key component of the OpenStax Microbiology Ancillary (OSMA) ADAPT Project lead by Ying Liu of City College San Francisco (CCSF) and her team. The original project was funded by the ASCCC OERI and includes 9 instructors from California and Hawaii. The team's first order of business was to create a Canvas shell that included question banks and case studies. They then decided to move the project to LibreTexts to ensure the resources were available to a broader audience. The LibreTexts-funded phase started in the summer of 2023 and initially had 2 instructors, Ying and Matthew Schweitzer from Solano Community College. The rest of the participants were students: four CCSF microbiology and former microbiology students participating, two of them who remain on the team this semester. During her year long sabbatical in Scotland, Ying managed to recruit seven University of Dundee students to participate as well.

Because Microbiology is a high impact STEM course in the California Community College (CCC) system, Ying and her team set out to create the Microbiology (OpenStax) Ancillaries ADAPT course which contains unique questions created by microbiology instructors and students to accompany the OpenStax Microbiology textbook. The team has thus far created 20-70 questions for each chapter in the OpenStax text with a goal to expand the question banks to match those of expensive commercial homework systems. They plan to add feedback (why the correct answers are correct, and the wrong answers are wrong) to all the questions; increase the diversity of the questions; add more labeling and other interactive activities; and design everything with accessibility in mind. They have also created a Collection of Case Studies using LibreTexts Studio H5P platform that accompany the textbook. There are currently 16 case studies in the collection. The team aims to complete the case studies for all 26 chapters of the OpenStax textbook before the end of the year!

If you'd like to learn more about the OSMA project, contact Ying Liu at ying.liu@mail.ccsf.edu.

The LibreTexts team congratulates Ying and her team for creating an open homework alternative to expensive commercial publisher platforms that will benefit Microbiology students and faculty alike.