Institutional Guide
The B.C. Open Textbook Institutional Guide is a starting point to help your institution incorporate open textbooks and other OER into the classroom starting with an OER Policy Tool. This page also provides information, guides, videos, brochures, posters, PowerPoint slides, research, and an adoption tracking tool.
OER Policy Development Tool
Created by Amanda Coolidge, Senior Manager of Open Education at BCcampus, and Daniel Demarte, Chief Academic Officer, Tidewater Community College, this institution-level Open Educational Resource Policy Development Tool was created specifically for college and university governance officials, as well as individuals who have responsibility for developing institutional policy, to promote the utilization of OER and scale efforts to full OER programs.
Open Textbooks
- Read about the B.C. Open Textbook Project.
- Read about other Canadian Open Education Initiatives.
- Learn more about open textbooks.
- Find the open textbook you need with the Open Textbook Directory.
- Use the Map to Success (thanks to Northwestern Michigan College) that guides faculty through these steps:
- Getting started
- Making decisions about choosing an open textbook and where to find it
- Final steps
- Learn how to evaluate books and resources in a repository by using the OER Repository Assessment Rubric.
- Get help assessing an open textbook or other OER with the Faculty Guide & OER Checklist, v.2.
- If you’re interested in creating OER, see the OER Workflow diagram (thanks to Billy Meinke at the University of Hawaii).
Four Easy Steps Toward Adoption
OpenStax offers four ideas for faculty members who aren’t ready to adopt an open textbook, but are willing to offer it as a recommended resource that can be used:
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For students that can’t access the required textbook immediately
- For students so they have unlimited access to a textbook (vs. rental, access codes, etc.)
- As an additional study aid for students
- As an additional resource for instructors and their students within a course.
B.C. Open Textbook Guides
To assist institutions, faculty, and staff with using, revising, and writing open textbooks, refer to the B.C. Open Textbook guides and tools below.
- Authoring Guide with a chapter on how to Adopt an Open Textbook
- Adaptation Guide
- Accessibility Toolkit – English
- Accessibility Toolkit (CB Trousse d’outils d’accessibilité pour les) – French
- Adoption Guide (open creation)
- Pressbooks Guide (open creation)
- Print on Demand Guide (open creation)
- Student Toolkit (open creation)
Librarians
The B.C. Open Education Librarians (previously BCOER) is a grassroots group of BC post-secondary librarians interested in Open Educational Resources. They have developed many resources for librarians and others to use.
For a list of Library Guides used by post-secondary institutions around British Columbia, visit BC Open Education Library Guides.
Guides and Resources from British Columbia
Thompson Rivers University: Documentation – OER Resources
University of British Columbia: Videos – Stories about faculty teaching in the “open”
Vancouver Island University: Finding + Using Open Educational Resources and Open Education Resources Directory
Videos
Videos are an easy and personal way to learn more about open textbooks. Below are several clips produced by institutions who are using open textbooks, and BCcampus.
Royal Roads University
A review of the effectiveness and perceptions of open educational resources as compared to textbooks
University of British Columbia
How to engage the general public
How to make education more accessible
How to make teaching more student-centered
How to practice responsible pedagogy
Vancouver Island University
Beyond Free: How Open Textbooks Can Improve Learning, Build Community and Empower Faculty
Creative Commons Licensing Offline Work Walkthrough
BCcampus
- A Look at the B.C. Open Textbook Project
- What Instructors Say about Open Textbooks
- One Minute for Open Textbooks
- Creative Commons Licenses for Non-profit Organizations
Promotion and Education
Feel free to download and use these resources to help spread the word about open textbooks.
- PowerPoint Presentation – use as is or customize
- Open Textbooks Brochure (PDF), size: 5″ x 7″.
- Open Textbook Poster (PDF), size: 11″ x 17″.
- Open Textbooks Sticker (JPG), size: 3″x 3″, circle.
- Key Things to Know about Open Education Resources (OER), size 11″x17″
- Key Things to Know about Open Education Resources (OER), size 15″x24″
- Key Things to Know about Open Education Resources (OER), size 24″x36″
- OER Repository Assessment Rubric
- Faculty Guide & OER Checklist, v.2
How to Assess OER at Your Institution
The team at OpenSUNY in New York has created the following assessment tool.
This tool clearly layouts indicators to rate such as:
- institutional support of OER
- technology support of OER
- OER integration into course development and instructional design
- OER course delivery
- supporting faculty in the use of OER
- evaluation and assessment of OER initiative
Accompanying this is the OER Success Framework Rubric which explains the range of support for each indicator.
Spreading the Word at Your Institution
Herbert E. “Buddy” Muse, Distance Learning Associate Director at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland, has graciously shared his document, Ideas for Spreading the Word about OERs at Your Institution. It is released with a CC BY license so feel free to download it and revise for your institution’s needs.
Group Activities
If you’re looking for ways to engage faculty and staff at your institution using group activities, look below for suggestions from the open education community.
- Remix Game (thanks to Quill West, MA, MLS, Open Education Project Manager at Pierce College, Puyallup, WA)
- Heather Ross, M.Ed., Educational Developer (Digital Pedagogies) at University of Saskatchewan suggests “…picking a variety of artifacts and having them determine if each open or not and how open is it based in the license.”
- Wm. Preston Davis, Ed.D., Director of Instructional Services at Northern Virginia Community College says: “I have had success by creating a scenario where I assigned the audience to teach a specific course (real or made-up) and asked them to find a specific item for a lesson. I would assign the item per table or section of the auditorium. Some items I would request include: an open textbook, an openly licensed image or photo, a video, a public domain book/article/audio file, etc. related to the specific lesson. You can specify the type of license for a more OER aware audience, or post a cheat sheet slide with web links for a novice group. I would have the audience report what they found, and would share some of my own findings to demonstrate how simple it is to find OER.
- Barbara Illowsky, PhD, Dean of Basic Skills & Open Educational Resources at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA does this activity with those new to OER:
- Ask faculty to think of 1 course they teach.
- Estimate new, used and rental costs for the textbook.
- Provide a link to college bookstore.
- Have faculty check their guesses.
- Can have a small group discussion then. Or, you do poll of people over estimating, under estimating or accurately guessing the prices.
Canadian Research on OER and Open Textbooks
Survey and Research Tools
OER Research Toolkit – developed and offered by the Open Education Group is used under a CC BY license.
Report and Track Open Textbook Adoptions
We ask B.C. post-secondary faculty to fill out the Adoption of an Open Textbook form if they have adopted an open textbook from either the B.C. Open Textbook or another collection. This information is anonymized and included in our general adoption statistics.
To help track potential and confirmed adoption numbers at your own institution, use the Open Textbook/OER Adoption Tracker spreadsheet. This resource was developed by Lansing Community College in Lansing, Michigan.