BBookX: Creating semi-automated textbooks to support student learning and decrease student costs

Open educational resources (OERs) are increasingly looked to as one approach for reducing costs and increasing access to educational materials. Unfortunately, developing OERs and operationalizing their use is fraught with difficulty. Users are challenged to search OER repositories for materials that are content-appropriate and high quality. Our team developed a new semi-automated text-authoring tool, BBookX [1, 2] to address these issues. We introduce BBookX, and discuss the utilization of a book generated using BBookX in an introductory information sciences and technology course. Survey results from students who used the book, as well as who engaged in creating their own books using BBookX, are presented. While BBookX has not been adopted for the use of creating open textbooks, the AI powering BBookX, along with faculty user testing, has led to similar derivative works in development to assist teachers with identifying relevant educational content and in creating assessments.