About the Award
The Mary Burgess Open Education Recognition Award recognizes faculty members who have made profound contributions to Open Education at Camosun College and demonstrated an impact on student learning and student costs by utilizing, designing, or adapting open resources in their instruction. These contributions may also include providing leadership for, research on, and advocacy for Open Education and Open Educational Resources (OER) to peers, students, and the institution in general.
Open Educational Resources/Open Textbooks have positive benefits on the student experience by lowering access barriers and reducing student costs for learning materials. They also enable instructors to modify, edit, or adapt high-quality resources to fit their individual teaching goals in order to provide meaningful, contextualized materials for their students.
In naming this award, the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning looked at educators across BC who have advanced the work of OER in their own careers and have themselves been recognized by their peers. After reviewing a short list of outstanding individuals, it was determined that CETL’s inaugural award for Open Education is named after Mary Burgess.
Mary Burgess is recognized globally for their work in Open Education. As the first Director of Open Education at BCcampus, Mary guided the work of the Open Textbook project, which includes hundreds of open textbooks and other open educational resources (OER). Open textbooks from the collection have been adopted by thousands of educators in the province, and to date, the project has saved students in B.C. over $30 million in textbook costs. (https://bccampus.ca/2022/07/20/theres-something-about-mary/)
This Year’s Recipient
This year, we recognize Charlie Molnar, Biology, for his work revising, adapting, and creating Open Educational Resources since 2015. Charlie began his Open Education journey by working with Dr. Jane Gair, another Camosun Biology instructor, to substantially revise the Open textbook, Concepts of Biology, creating the first Canadian edition which Charlie and several of his fellow biology instructors at Camosun have been using in their courses for the past eight years.
Every Scheduled Development period since 2015, Charlie has made revisions and enhancements to Concepts of Biology. He has revised the textbook using student feedback, created and added video content (including captions to make them accessible) as well as graphics and images, integrated material related to Indigenous culture, especially of the Pacific Coast Aboriginal peoples, and their expertise in processing food and calories, etc., and added H5P interactive components (to both the textbook and the videos). Most recently, Charlie created an Open website to support students who are thinking of enrolling in or who are preparing to start Biology 103 at Camosun. This website contains the first two chapters of the Open textbook, the first laboratory exercise and first assignment for Biology 103, and scientific-terminology activities; before coming to the first class, students can prepare for the first days and weeks of class.
While two of these projects received funding from BCcampus, (the initial textbook and the H5P activities), Charlie did most of the work during his Scheduled Development time or in addition to his regular work. Charlie believes that engaging in Open Education is a wonderful thing to do, but not just for students, saying “it also helped me refresh my understanding of unfolding biological and genetic research so I could include up-to-date examples and convey them at an appropriate level both in my teaching and in the textbook.” (https://camosunelearning.opened.ca/2022/10/25/open-education-story-charlie-molnar/).
Award Criteria
Faculty will be considered for this award if they have met two or more of the following criteria:
- Improved teaching efficiency and effectiveness through using, adapting, and creating Open Educational Resources (OER) course materials aligned to course learning outcomes.
- Developed OER to share with colleagues, enhance student-learning opportunities, and reduce barriers to education.
- Used Open Educational Practices (OEP) for learning, teaching, and assessment while challenging, supporting, and inspiring students to do their best work.
- Demonstrated creativity and passion in delivering educational experiences that expand student reach and influence beyond the classroom by providing opportunities for students to collaborate and openly share their work with the wider community.
- Demonstrated knowledge of and passion for open education and the benefits it brings to learning and teaching while contributing to the ongoing work to make the global open education movement inclusive and fair.
- Worked collaboratively with colleagues and students on open education initiatives, aimed at integrating OEP into teaching and learning.
- Acted as a valuable resource for students, colleagues, and Camosun by sharing open education knowledge and promoting and encouraging the development and use of OER and OEP.
- Participated beyond Camosun in open education initiatives such as sharing OER, contributing to OE committees/communities of practice, and pursuing or providing PD opportunities in open.