About me

Hi there! Thanks for visiting my blog. I'm a business librarian at York University. I support a number of business programs at York such as accounting, taxation, and HR studies. For the Fall 2017 and Winter 2018 semesters, I'll be participating in SPARC's inaugural Open Education Leadership Program. Check back often to learn more as I delve deeper into the world of open educational resources, open education pedagogy, and how I plan to bring these ideas back to York University!

All content on this blog is available under a CC BY 4.0 international license.

Popular posts from this blog

OER 101 for Faculty

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You might have heard the term 'open educational resources' (OER) at conferences, committee meetings, or teaching workshops around campus. This post will highlight some of the key 'whats & whys' of OER for faculty. Read on to learn more about OER basics! WHAT's AN OER? OER can exist in a variety of ways. They might be a textbook, a lesson plan, a test bank, or an educational video. However, for a teaching resource to be an OER, it needs to be licensed in such a way that anyone can freely access, download, reuse, and even revise the content. Licensing permissions for OER are guided by the 5R framework: Retain: users of the content have the right to make, own, and control copies of an OER Reuse: the content can be reused in many ways such as for a lecture, a course reading, or personal study Revise : the OER can be adapted and modified by users Remix:  the original or revised OER content can be combined with other open educational resources to cr
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Bringing an OER Strategy to York

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During the Open Education 2017 conference , I spent my time attending sessions that highlighted different approaches for developing and sustaining open educational resources (OER) models at higher ed institutions. Some sessions highlighted the importance of student advocacy , while others focused on the role the library can play or innovative institutional PD programming for faculty. I took really detailed notes for one key reason... My university currently doesn't have a coordinated OER plan. via GIPHY That's right! Unfortunately, York University doesn't have a pilot, task force, or any kind of system-wide approach to advocating and supporting OER at the moment. However, I feel like York has the right ingredients to develop a successful OER program on campus: 1) Engaged Student Body York's main undergraduate student union, York Federation Students , is a force for change at my university. They've created successful campaigns that advocated for the
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Getting Started with an OER Strategy at York University Libraries

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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
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