Explorations into Open Education

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...

Creating your own open educational resource (OER) can seem like an exciting, but overwhelming task. This blog post will walk you through some of the key building blocks you need to think about before and during the development process. Read on to learn more and before you know it you'll be building your own OER tower, much like this wonder pooch: via GIPHY Building Block One: Conduct Environmental Scan  Before you get started, you'll want to first take a look at what other OER might exist on your topic. If you find something has already been created, perhaps you could work on revising that OER instead of creating something completely from scratch. If you're not sure how to find an OER, Lansing Community College has created a great guide that lists some of the major repositories . Their guide also has a section that highlights subject specific OER . Additionally, I would recommend searching the Mason OER Metafinder . It allows you to search 15 major OER reposito...

Imagine you're ready to take the plunge and start creating your own OER, such as an open textbook, online instructional video, or quiz bank. While you'll be thinking about issues such as how you want to design your OER and what tools you'll use in order to ensure your resource can be revised by others, you'll also want to start looking into what kind of open license makes the most sense for you. Copyright and the topic of open licenses can sometimes make people want to bury their heads... via GIPHY But don't let these topics get you down! Instead, keep reading to learn about the various open license options that are available to OER creators. Copyright and Creative Commons: What's the difference? Traditional copyright allows creators to have all rights reserved for their creative works such as books, educational materials, or videos. However, by using a traditional copyright license or by not indicating what kind of license you're using, this keeps...

Finding the right open educational resource (OER) for your course can sometimes be a challenge. However, if you're looking for Canadian-specific content for your courses at York, you might want to start with BCcampus' Open Education Resources. Read on to learn more about how this repository from British Columbia got started, its pros and cons, and finally some general search tips. 1) History of BC Campus OpenEd Resources BCcampus has been around since 2002 and helps facilitate experimentation and collaboration in the online learning and open education movement amongst post-secondary institutions in British Columbia, Canada ( Klassen,  2012). This organization is funded by the B.C. government's Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training (BCcampus, n.d.-b); however, it also receives funding from non-profit organizations like the Hewlett Foundation for initiatives like its open textbook library (William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, n.d.).  In late 2012, B...