Authorship

With a local instance of Pressbooks at Concordia, the OER Team at Concordia University Library provides administrative and technical support to grant recipients and their research assistants who implement open textbooks into our instance of Pressbooks. Special thanks to Francisco Berrizbeitia for maintaining the backend of our local instance and for encouraging the growth of our in-house Pressbooks knowledge. Thanks to all of our grant recipients for continuing to inspire us. The Library’s evolving OER Team forms the authorship of Our Guide to Pressbooks at Concordia University.

Authorship and Contributor Details

Rachel Harris

Rachel leads Concordia University’s Open Educational Resources program and collaborates on open-access projects and services, including work related to our institutional repository, Spectrum, ORCID, and OA publishing. Working with and mentoring OER work-study students is one of the joys of open educational work at Concordia. A special thanks to Sana Ahmad and Lena Palacios for their work on our Pressbooks Guide, specifically for their keenness to learn new software and their desire to share insights on what optimizing Pressbooks looks like. Together, our aim is to help and inspire Pressbooks users in their open textbook projects in an easy-to-follow, multi-media, and interactive guidebook.

Sana Ahmad

Sana is an MA Educational Technology student at Concordia University. During her time as OER Instructional Design Assistant at Concordia Library (Sept. 2022 – June 2023), Sana honed her education technology skills. Sana brings a passion for crafting impactful open educational resources and learning experiences from her current degree and her information-studies background.  Learning about Pressbooks from multiple sources, especially YouTube videos, and receiving H5P questions from open-textbook grant recipients, led to Sana’s contributions to the overall design of this practical guide for users.

Rahil Kakkad

Rahil is an electrical engineering undergraduate student at Concordia University who worked as an OER Instructional Design Assistant at Concordia Library from May 2024 to December 2024. Passionate about open education, he contributed extensively to this guide while learning Pressbooks himself and documenting his insights to make it easier for others to learn. With a strong technical background, he excels at breaking down complex concepts into clear, user-friendly explanations. His experience with HTML and CSS also played a key role in refining the book’s design, enhancing both functionality and readability. The ability to communicate technical information effectively is something he hopes to carry forward into his future career in engineering, where clarity and accessibility are just as vital as innovation.

Zo Kopyna

Zo Kopyna is a multidisciplinary artist working towards their Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design at Concordia University. They have been a part of Concordia Library’s OER project as a work-study student since September 2024, contributing to the writing and design of various project elements such as this guidebook. Zo is passionate about accessibility and advocates for an intersectional approach to media in its design and consumption. They hope this guidebook inspires meaningful engagement with the concepts of accessible design and encourages authors to centre diverse users’ experiences when creating material with Pressbooks.

 

Chhayhee Sok

Chhayhee Sok is an undergraduate student at Concordia and joined the OER team as a Writing, Design, and Outreach Assistant. As a student of the work-study program and working under the guidance of Dr. Harris, he has made minor contributions to the Guide to Pressbooks. Learning about Open Educational Resources and creating visuals with H5P Elements has been an area of interest and having the opportunity to become involved has been an exciting endeavour for him. On the OER team, he has contributed to the creation of the Guide to Pressbooks H5P plugin.

 

Asifur Rahman

Asifur Rahman is an international undergraduate student pursuing his degree in computer science at the Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science. He worked as the OER Instructional Design Assistant Work-Study Student during the Winter 2025, under the guidance of Dr. Rachel Harris. His contributions to the Guide to Pressbooks include chapter-level content and edits. He also co-developed an H5P plugin using PHP with Chhayhee Sok and contributed to Open Education Month’s programming and outreach. He enjoys connecting with new people and is excited to continue contributing to the OER community.

 

Lena Palacios

Lena is pursuing a second BA in Creative Writing, First Peoples Studies, and Irish Studies at Concordia University. She/they enjoyed their time so much learning from and collaborating alongside the OER Team while working as an OER Instructional Design Assistant Work-Study student in 2023. They now want to become an academic librarian specializing in User Experience (UX) design and specialize in critical race theory, ethnic studies, Indigenous studies, and women’s and gender studies.

Sarah Fahkri and Noémie Sauvé

Sarah Fakhri was the OER Outreach Assistant Work-Study student between 2022 and 2024, creating many graphics, posters, Instagram posts, and our book covers. Carrying on from Sarah’s design work, Noémie Sauvé was the OER Outreach Assistant Work-Study Student during the Fall of 2024.

Ariel Harlap

Ariel Harlap was an education developer for Concordia University’s Centre of Teaching and Learning between 2022 and 2024. Learn more about Ariel Harlap. Their contributions will appear in forthcoming sections on Stacking Learning technologies and Third Party Content.

Francisco Berrizbeitia

Francisco Berrizbeitia is a developer at Concordia University Library.