Edubytes – Defining and Recognizing Excellence in OER

By remy corbet on April 23, 2025

This month, our guest editors are Will Engle, Strategist, Open Education Initiatives at the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, with contributions from Dr. Simon Bates, Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President, Teaching and Learning. They highlight the importance of OER to reduce student costs and showcase all the initiatives available to the UBC teaching and learning community.

The University of British Columbia has long demonstrated its commitment to open educational resources (OER) as a way to reduce student costs and lower barriers to access. This commitment is reflected in several key initiatives, including OER Fund grants that support the development and integration of OER into credit courses, collaborative support from the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT) and UBC Library, and formal recognition of OER contributions as evidence of educational leadership in the university’s Senior Appointments Guide to Tenure and Promotion.

Building on this foundation, last year the offices of the Vice-President Academic at both UBC Okanagan and UBC Vancouver launched the UBC Open Education Resources Excellence and Impact Awards to recognize outstanding work by faculty who have materially advanced the use and impact of OER at UBC. These awards are intended to recognize excellence in faculty use of OER in teaching and learning, the positive impact of their work on student affordability at UBC, and their contributions to the broader open education community on campus.

Addressing barriers to learning materials

OER are teaching, learning, and research materials—available in any format—that are either in the public domain or released under an open license, which allows no-cost access, reuse, adaptation, and redistribution of the materials by others. At UBC, instructors are increasingly adopting OER to ease financial pressures on students while creating more relevant, innovative course materials.

According to the UBC Student Affordability Task Force, which recommended the creation of the UBC OER Awards to help recognize and incentivize the use of OER, the cost of course materials remains a significant challenge for students. The 2024 AMS Academic Experience Survey (n=4,148) found that 27% of students faced financial hardship due to the cost of textbooks and course materials. While 65% of students reported buying books they rarely or never used, 64% also felt that not purchasing required materials would harm their academic success. To put these challenges in perspective, 51% of respondents also reported that they had worried about affording groceries in the past year, highlighting how the cost of course materials can directly affect students’ well-being and ability to learn.

OER can also help address other systemic issues. Students often pay for temporary access to digital textbooks, rather than owning them outright, with access expiring at the end of the term. Additionally, textbooks are frequently misaligned with course curriculum, prompting instructors to assign multiple texts or use only selected chapters. To address these issues, instructors often use OER to create meaningful, customized learning materials that align with their curriculum and reflect the diverse backgrounds and experiences of their students. This kind of intentional, student-centered use of OER reflects the broader values of excellence that are recognized by the UBC OER Awards.

Defining excellence in OER

According to the UBC OER Awards criteria (pdf), excellence in OER includes more than just student cost savings. It reflects a sustained commitment to accessibility, inclusion, and pedagogical innovation. Excellence may also involve active student participation in creating or improving resources, the use of OER to support innovative teaching strategies, and efforts to make the materials easily discoverable by others. A strong commitment to integrating diverse perspectives and ways of knowing, relevant to the discipline, is also part of excellence in this area. Once the OER is in use, evidence of impact includes student cost savings, improved learning outcomes, adoption of OER by others, and measurable contributions to the broader open education community through leadership, collaboration, and capacity-building activities.

“Creating, implementing, and deploying OER within the curriculum requires substantial time and effort,” said Dr. Simon Bates, Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President, Teaching and Learning. “UBC faculty are undertaking this work because they are committed to providing students with affordable learning materials of high quality —and they are achieving excellence in both outcomes and impact.”

The recently announced 2025 OER Excellence and Impact Awards winners include:

  • Lindsay Cuff, an instructor in UBCV Faculties of Forestry and Land & Food Systems, created Writing Place: A Scholarly Writing Textbook, a free, interactive resource tailored to LFS and Forestry students and their community partners.
  • Kelly Allison and Marie Nightbird, instructors in the UBCV School of Social Work, developed A Toolkit for Teaching Communication Skills in Social Work, supporting student learning and collaborative exploration of interpersonal communication.
  • A UBCO engineering team, led by Clair Yan, created the Introduction to Engineering Thermodynamics textbook and problem bank, offering accessible, high-quality content that enhances engagement and reduces costs.
  • Ramon Lawrence, a computer science instructor at UBCO, developed OER that has saved students over $500,000, reached more than 3,000 learners, and exemplifies inclusive, accessible teaching.

The use of OER is having an impact: the 2024 AMS Academic Experience Survey found that 80% of student respondents having used OER in lieu of paid course materials, which was up from 61% in the previous year. “OER is an effective strategy for making learning more affordable,” said Dr. Bates. “It’s estimated that courses using OER have saved UBC students over $5 million in total over the past decade and that impact is cumulatively increasing year on year.” The following resources offer insight into how excellence in OER is being defined and practiced at UBC.

Examples and resources

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The CTLT is located on the ancestral and unceded territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ - speaking xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) peoples. These lands have long been a place of learning for Musqueam, with cultural and traditional knowledge passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years.