In times of uncertainty and change, it is vital for our well-being to find support in and gratefulness for our community and to celebrate the amazing work people around us continue to do despite challenging circumstances. So now, I would like to take a moment to recognize this year’s Open Education and ZTC Recognition Award nominees: people from around the college 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 and/or moving their courses to ZTC.
See our special Open Education News … and stuff for more information!
Access
Crystal Lomas (course developer) and Puja Gupta (project initiator, manager, and contributor), Math Community Learning Partnerships; Project: Math 097 (self-paced)
The self-paced version of the Math 097 course is an alternate to Math 12 that gives students an accessible and self-paced pathway to completing math prerequisites. Their goal was to remove one more financial obstacle for students, the purchase of textbooks, by integrating an Open Textbook and the open homework platform MyOpenMath, offering a totally ZTC experience
Arts and Science
Thomas Nienhuis, English; Project: English 151 Open Textbook creation and move to ZTC
Thomas Nienhuis teaches composition and technical writing courses and last winter decided to develop a supplementary textbook for his English 151 course. He created the book to enhance and contextualize the course grammar content, to give students something to refer to, which did not cost $130. He has also created H5P interactive practice activities for students to test their understanding of the content within the context of the text.
Larry Lee, Chemistry; Project: Chemistry 120 – moved his section of this course to an Open Textbook for Winter 2025
Chemistry 120 is a University Transfer course, and to reduce costs to students, Larry adopted an Open Textbook from OpenStax “Chemistry, 2nd edition”, by John McMurray, which also contains problem sets that can be set up in the D2L Quiz tool. Larry says “I like to give special thank-you to CETL for the workshops and assistance with webpage design as these are extremely helpful in transitioning to no cost textbooks.  This has always been the goal to achieve Universal design to enhance student learning and delivering success.”
Tara Tudor and Nicole Kilburn, Social Sciences; Project: Making Anthropology 104 ZTC
Camosun Anthropology faculty members have been working with Open Educational Resources and moving to ZTC for several years. Their latest project, spearheaded by Tara Tudor and Nicole Kilburn, was to move Anthropology 104, Introduction to Anthropology, to ZTC by creating and curating course materials and providing them to students through D2L.
HHS
Stephanie Won and Shannon Keyser, Bachelor of Science Nursing; Project: Creation and development of the Practical Nursing bridge to Bachelor of Science Nursing Program utilizing Open Educational Resources
We recognize Shannon Keyser and Stephanie Won for their hard work and leadership bringing open educational resources to the “Practical Nurse to Baccalaureate of Science in Nursing Bridge” program. Their tremendous effort and hard work have resulted in courses that use open resources to learn assessments rather than relying on historic practices of printed textbooks. They truly are pathfinders in the nursing department’s pivot towards using more of these resources and courses in the “Nursing, Baccalaureate of Science” program are building upon the work they started.
Kendal Adam, Sonography; Project: HLSC 264 – Interprofessional Practices
Kendal has adopted Open Educational Resources (OER) created by Lynelle Yutani and taken over the HLSC 264 course WordPress site. Her students created simulation/learning tools using H5P, engaging with students through Open Pedagogy projects that they will be able to leverage later when in the workforce to create teaching and learning materials themselves. Kendal as also been quietly making some of her other courses Zero Textbook Cost by moving from traditional textbooks to a combination of OER, library resources, digital modules, etc.
Learning Services
Aditi Gupta and Ying Liu (UVic Libraries), Robbyn Lanning (Library), and Natasha Parrish (CETL); Project: The open-access document and website: Culturally Responsive and Inclusive Pedagogy Toolkit.
UVic Librarians Aditi Gupta, and Ying Liu, and Camosun Learning Services colleagues Robbyn Lanning, and Natasha Parrish have collaborated on the Culturally Responsive and Inclusive Pedagogy Toolkit, an open access guidebook and website created to address structural inequalities and support diverse student populations. The toolkit includes strategies for integrating culturally responsive teaching, inclusive pedagogy, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and decolonizing teaching practices. It offers practical scenarios to help librarians promote anti-racist practices, enhance cultural fluency, and foster a sense of belonging for diverse students.
The Open Education/ZTC Advocacy Team
Finally, we recognize the Camosun College Open Education/Zero Textbook Cost Advocacy Team which brings together Open Education champions from across the institution to provide advice and advocacy for Open Education at the college. The team is:
- Adam Maurer, Bookstore
- Asha Rao, Community, Family, and Child Studies
- Dean Schimpf, Academic Upgrading
- Emily Schudel (team facilitator), Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
- Erin Howard, Learning Services
- Gwenda Bryan, Library
- Haydn Lloyd, Copyright
- Katie Waterhouse, Social Sciences
- Michel Turcotte, Student Society
- Michelle Clement, Marketing
- Puja Gupta, Community Learning Partnerships
- Robin Fast, Community, Family, and Child Studies
- Will Meredith, Library
- Rebekah Prette, Library
- Rob Thompson, Ombudsperson
- Young Joo, Library
If you would like to join our Advocacy Team, email Emily Schudel!