What is it?
As instructors prepare for your teaching, they will want to assign learning materials and incorporate readings, images, videos, problem sets, or other materials from different sources into their modules or lecture materials. Additionally, they may want to consider the benefits of online technologies that allow students to share or contribute to communities beyond the classroom walls. At UBC, many instructors have chosen to incorporate an “open” practice in their courses when creating learning resources, re-suing other people’s work, or designing assessments.
Open education encompasses a framework of open sharing to improve education access, affordability, and effectiveness. Common open practices at UBC include:
- The use or creation of open educational resources (OER). OER are teaching, learning and research resources such as textbooks, videos, articles, images, etc., that are often free and carry legal permissions that allow people to copy, modify and share the resources freely.
- The adoption of open educational pedagogies that leverage UBC’s open learning technologies such as UBC Blogs, H5P, and the UBC Wiki. This approach often includes the incorporation of student centred pedagogical models that emphasize the role of students as collaborators in the production of knowledge and the benefit of authentic audiences for students’ scholarly outputs.
Considerations
UBC’s Student Affordability Task Force (SATF) recognized that the rising costs of academic textbooks and paid digital learning platforms create ongoing affordability challenges for students. However, as the SATF also noted, the widespread adoption of OER has significantly reduced these expenses for UBC students.
Using OER for course content and assigned learning materials is an effective strategy that saves both time and money. Online versions are free for students and instructors, and there are no restrictions on usage, copying, or distribution. OER can also be modified, adapted, and shared without copyright concerns, allowing instructors to tailor materials to their curriculum, teaching methods, or student needs. Additionally, by incorporating open pedagogies into assignments, educators enable students to become knowledge creators rather than passive consumers, fostering deeper learning and engagement.
Key considerations when using OER or open pedagogies include:
- Licensing and copyright: Use and create content with clear open licenses (e.g., Creative Commons) to encourage sharing and modification.
- Pedagogical effectiveness: Design open resources and open assignments that promote active learning, critical thinking, and student engagement.
- Collaboration and co-creation: Encourage learners to contribute, adapt, and remix content, fostering a participatory learning environment.
- Risk and privacy: Working in the open often involves risk and not all risk is created equal. Respect student’s privacy and ownership of their work when engaging in open pedagogy.
- Accessibility and Inclusivity: Ensure materials that you use or create meet diverse learning needs, including multilingual and disability-friendly formats.
- Assessment and Feedback: Align OER with meaningful assessments that emphasize process and reflection.
Where to start
If you are interested in using, adapting, or developing OER or open pedagogies, UBC provides many support services and resources:
- Browse the Open UBC website, which is a curated collection of resources for faculty and students to learn about open scholarship and education and what it means to teaching, learning.
- Book a consult and connect with the many different experts that help support open education at UBC. You can also contact them at open.ubc@ubc.ca.
- Explore the UBC OER collection of curated open resources that have been developed at UBC. Check out the UBC Library OER guide to find more sources of openly licensed materials that can be used in your courses.
- Non-open materials may have copyright restrictions that impact how they can be used in UBC courses. Visit copyright.ubc.ca for UBC’s guidelines and requirements for complying with copyright laws.
- Attend a workshop on the many different aspects of open education.
Go further
There are a number of grants and funding pathways to support open education at UBC:
- The UBC Vancouver OER Fund supports affordable and inclusive access to learning materials through the use of open educational resources in UBCV credit courses. The fund contains two grant programs: OER Affordability Grants provide funding to incorporate OER as required materials into UBCV credit courses, and OER Rapid Innovation Grants support wide range of innovative activities and events that increase OER development, awareness, and capacity building.
- The UBC Vancouver Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund enriches student learning by supporting innovative and effective educational enhancements. As part of a priority focus on inclusion, it supports the creation or integration of open educational resources to make education more affordable and accessible to students.
Looking to dig deeper? The UBC Program for Open Scholarship and Education (POSE) is a three-month flexible and blended program that will help you develop foundational knowledge of Open Scholarship, Open Education, and Open Research. All POSE content is open and modules can be explored at your own pace.
