Category: OER

BCcampus Calls for Proposals for Creating OER

In case you missed it, BCcampus has posted a new set of Call for Proposals for creating Open Educations Resources (OER). Find out more at:

If you have any questions about OER or Open Pedagogy, check out these BCcampus resources, or contact Emily Schudel (schudele@camosun.ca).

Open Education Grants Expressions of Interest for Camosun Instructors

Recently, Camosun College was awarded a BCcampus Open Education Sustainability Grant from BCcampus. This grant has been allocated to provide teaching release and professional support to Camosun instructors interested in redesigning their courses over the next year through creating, adapting, and/or adopting Open Educational Resources (OER) or engaging in other forms of open educational practices with the aim of enhancing the learning experience for students.

This would be an ideal project for May/June 2020 Scheduled Development. Accepted applicants will begin their projects with an intensive workshop (3 full days face to face with days between for reflection and homework) from May 19 to May 25, 2020. Project participants will learn from each other and will be supported by the Camosun open project team based in CETL and the Library.

To be considered for this project, interested faculty must submit a 250 word proposal by January 20, 2020.

Definitions of Terms from BCcampus

Application Guidelines

  • Applicants must be CCFA or BCGEU faculty members (term or continuing) at Camosun College.
  • Created/adopted/adapted OER must become a required resource for a course or courses, replacing a commercial textbook or resource.
  • The creation/adoption/adaptation of the OER must reduce the cost to students (preferably to no-cost) and increase their use of a learning resource.

Proposal requirements

Submit your project proposal online by Jan. 20, 2020.

Proposal descriptions should be a maximum of 250 words, and include the following:

  • What kind of project you would like to pursue – rationale, objectives
  • How the project outcomes will reduce costs to students and enhance their learning experience
  • If your project intends to create new OER, provide a rationale for why you are creating new resources rather than modifying or adapting existing resources
  • Indicate when you plan on using your OER in your course(s). (Your OER should be ready to be integrated into your course(s) sometime between May 2020 and September 2021.)
  • Letters of support from your Chair and Dean

Examples of possible projects

  • Your project could be an Open Textbook, a multimedia resource, course modules, quiz questions/testbank, web resources, video, etc.
  • Your project could support you moving away from traditional textbooks to adapting/adopting an existing open textbook, or moving to no textbook using a variety of open resources, etc.
  • Your project could involve integrating open activities into your course activities, or creating non-disposable assignment options for students.

Evaluation Criteria

  • Potential impact on student experience in the form of high-quality materials, maximum access, open and innovative pedagogy, and cost savings to students.
  • Extent to which project includes curation and customization of OER that will be freely and openly shared throughout and beyond Camosun College.
  • Distribution of “grants” across a range of disciplines.

If you have questions, please contact Emily Schudel, schudele@camosun.ca.

The Open EdTech Collaborative

The Open EdTech Collaborative is “a community of educators, technologists, and designers sharing their expertise to foster and support open infrastructure for the BC post-secondary sector. No contracts or agreements are required to join us, just a willingness and ability to actively participate in our collective endeavor to:

  • encourage technological autonomy and provide ways for students, faculty and institutions to own and control their own data.
  • lower the barrier to participation on the open web for BC faculty and students.
  • provide a more sustainable ed tech infrastructure to BC higher education that gives institutions more control over their tools.  Institutions are currently at the mercy of vendor pricing, upgrade cycles, and exit strategies.  This puts institutions at a certain degree of risk when there are changes to any of the variables beyond their control.  Open-source approaches reduce the risk to institutions in this regard.
  • assist BC faculty in evaluating and making informed pedagogical decisions around open-source teaching and learning applications.”

If you are a student or educator in BC, you can sign up for an Open ETC account , and try out the tools they support, like WordPress, Sandstorm (a collection of open source applications) or Mattermost (an open-source messaging platform) – and since Open ETC is hosted by Thompson Rivers University, these platforms are available to you on BC servers, and are thus FIPPA compliant.

Take a look and try out some of their tools. And just so you know, this blog is now on the Open ETC WordPress instance!

Open/OER Online Courses

Interested in learning more about Open Educational Resources (OER) and Creative Commons licensing?  Here are a couple of open courses for you to check out (and adopt or adapt – they are all CC licenced!)!

Open Content to Transform the Classroom by Matthew Bloom, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

  • Part 1: The Easy Way to Create, License, and Share Free Materials
  • Part 2: Exploring the Possibilities of Open Educational Resources

Learn OER managed by the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges licensed under a CC-BY 4.0

  • Module 1: Introduction
  • Module 2: Copyright  License
  • Module 3: Understanding OER
  • Module 4: Open License
  • Module 5: Creative Commons Licensing
  • Module 6: Finding OER
  • Module 7: Public Domain
  • Module 8: Sharing OER
  • Module 9: Accessibility
  • Module 10: Why OER Matters

Reflections on Open Access, OER, and Community of Practice (Reblog)

I don’t often reblog, but it’s been awhile since I’ve posted (having been off for a couple of weeks), and it’s Open Access Week.  Dana McFarland at Vancouver Island University (who have an amazing blog site) has posted some very thoughtful reflections on Open Access, OER, and Community of Practice.  Given my personal current interest in Open, and moving more into working with OER and Open Pedagogy here at Camosun, I wanted to share these reflections.  And you will see more here in this space about OER in the coming months!

Open Access Week 2019: Reflections on Open Access, OER, and Community of Practice

 

Supporting Students with Disabilities in BC Postsecondary Online Course

Today, I’d like to take a moment, and a short post, to promote an online course offering, available for you, for free, from the Justice Institute of BC:  the open, online course Supporting Students with Disabilities in BC Postsecondary .  In addition, content in the course and associated resource site are Creative Commons licenced, so material is available for you to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute!

From the website:

“In collaboration with Selkirk and Camosun Colleges, Justice Institute of British Columbia (JIBC) has developed this course and a resource website to educate trainers on disability issues in the classroom. The purpose of the course is to increase the success of people with disabilities in a trades / technical program by dispelling common myths about students with disabilities and to address faculty’s concerns and questions about different disabilities. It will help each faculty member to obtain the appropriate knowledge and problem-solving skills to offer accommodations and select appropriate teaching strategies for their disabled students. The expectation is that the new techniques learned will help students achieve their full potential and success in their chosen programs.

This multi-modal course can be taken online independently, or in a facilitated face-to-face group. Throughout the course there are several engaging learning activities including scenarios with reflection questions, case studies followed by discussions, and simulation exercises aimed to trigger learner empathy.

This course provides practical information and easy-to-use strategies to help you to better support the learning of students with disabilities in your classrooms and campuses.

At the end of the course, you will be able to

  • Define what is meant by having a disability and become familiar with a wide range of disabilities and how they impact learning
  • Identify the concepts of duty to accommodate and understand the process of reasonable accommodation
  • Apply strategies and tools from Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to create an inclusive learning environment to accommodate your students
  • Develop personal goals, address institution-wide responsibilities and identify next steps for creating inclusive campuses”

 

BCcampus Open Education

Open Education is a going concern here in B.C. and around the world. If you don’t know a lot about Open Education and Open Educational Resources (OER), a good place to start is the BCcampus Open Education website (https://open.bccampus.ca/)

What I really want to do today, however, is encourage you to explore the many projects and grants available through and supported by BCcampus. I am reblogging their Call for Proposals webpage below, where you can find out more about reviewing open textbooks, or nominating someone for an Award for Excellence in Open Education, as well as about past calls, and current and past Open projects.

If you have any questions about Open Education, contact BCcampus, or email eLearning support to arrange a meeting with one of our instructional designers (desupport@camosun.ca).

Calls, Expressions of Interest, Reviews

 

Minister of Advanced Education announces big investment in Open Education in BC!!

I don’t normally do re-blogs, but this is big news for BC Post-Secondary educators working (or wanting to work) with Open Education Resources.  If you want to know more about Open Education Resources and how to create them or integrate them into your teaching, come see us in eLearning!  Contact desupport@camosun.ca to arrange to meet with an instructional designer.

More open textbooks arriving on student bookshelves