2 Bookdown Advantages

Overview

There are many advantages for using the Bookdown as a course resource. As you view the features below, consider whether you can use Bookdown to share access with learners.

Accessible

  1. Open access to course materials: A Course Book created with Bookdown is a simple URL! Students do not need to login to Moodle to access the book. They can also download as a pdf or epub (discussed below), so limited wifi shouldn’t be an issue.

  2. Integration with Moodle: The CourseBook can be embedded in a tab in Moodle, so students can access the book within their Moodle shell.

  3. Mobile-friendly: Easy to navigate on various devices. This is especially important for our International students.

  4. Collaborative infrastructure for design & maintenance (GitHub): GitHub allows course writers to track changes, collaborate on material, and update all versions of courses without having to edit each Moodle shell of a course. Our TWU Online team has been using GitHub since 2018, so the integration of RStudio went fairly smoothly.

Features

  1. Displays as ebook
  2. Generates table of contents
  3. Integrated search function
  4. Generates ePub or PDF

Appearance

  1. Font: Can increase or decrease the size of the font, as well as change the font family to either Serif or Sans.

  2. Background: Can choose a white, sepia, or night background. The night background in particular helps those with screen fatigue.

Design

  1. Blocks: We use blocks for activities, notes, assessment, resources, etc.

  2. Side menu: Displays the layout of the course and units to help with navigation.

  3. Icons: Easy to add icons for activities (we use emojipedia😊)

Integration

  1. Integration of a variety of interactive activities: H5P, Padlet, Hypothesis, discussions, graphs, maps, etc.

  2. Ability to link to other sections of the book/course: footnotes, references, glossary, etc.

  3. Embedded content: slides, videos, pdfs, etc.

Reproducible

  1. Reproducible: If the repository is open to the public, you can fork (copy) it and use it for your own purposes.
  2. Dynamic stats with R: Many stats courses use Bookdown as it displays synamic stats.