Explorations into Open Education

Over the last 6-months or so, you've been hearing about open educational resources (OER) at our all-staff library meetings at York. Now that you know a little bit more about OER and how they help make university more affordable for students, it's time to talk about how we can get started with developing an OER initiative at our institution! A really great way for us to get started is to create an internal library committee to explore how York University Libraries can work with other York departments to develop and support an OER strategy. Here are some potential projects the committee can undertake (1) Investigating what other institutions are doing with OER: We'll want to conduct an environmental scan and look at what's already been done. This will help us gain a better understanding of some approaches we could take at York. (2) Reaching out to students: We'll also want to talk to students, including the student unions and associations on campu

You may be familiar with open educational resources (OER) and how they can make a course more affordable for your students. Using OER in your classroom helps create an even playing field for your students, as it allows all students regardless of income to access the course materials from the beginning of the semester. Research shows that post-secondary students are struggling to keep up with the cost of textbooks. In fact, one study by Jhangiani and Jhangiani (2017) found that 54% of their survey sample of B.C. post-secondary students opted to not purchase a required textbook at least once during their time in higher education. While using OER for your course creates a more affordable learning environment for your students, it's valuable to look beyond the cost savings of OER and examine some of their pedagogical affordances. You're probably already working your hardest to use active learning approaches like problem-based learning, simulations, or even something as simple as