Is your institution ready for open?
We have created this page as a resource for you to use to incorporate open educational resources (OER)–such as open textbooks and open course materials–within your institution. Please use the following information to identify and modify open textbooks and other OER; connect with local resources to be part of the open conversation; and create policies for the use of OER in your institution.
Assess your institution
Will OER provide value to your institution, stakeholders, and students? To ensure the successful implementation of OER, including open textbooks and courses, in your institution, it’s important to have a baseline to evaluate your current level of OER in terms of awareness and interest.
The team at OpenSUNY in New York has created an assessment tool [Excel], with an accompanying OER Success Framework Rubric [Docx], to help you evaluate the results. For other tools, see OER evaluations.
Creating policies for OER
Amanda Coolidge, Director of Open Education at BCcampus, and Daniel Demarte, Chief Academic Officer, Tidewater Community College, have developed an OER Policy Development Tool to help you develop institutional policies to take advantage of all of the benefits of OER.
Adopting OER
Community and collaboration form the foundation of OER, and a substantial amount of work has been undertaken by individuals and institutions around the world to create and promote OER. We’ve assembled this list of resources to help you adopt open textbooks in your institution:
- Read about Open Education at BCcampus
- Read about other Canadian Open Education Initiatives and open textbooks
- See the Around the World map for where books from the B.C. Open Textbooks Collection are being used.
- Find an open textbook or open course materials
- A list of testbanks and other faculty resources can be found on the Request Faculty Materials form using the “Select the Faculty-only Supplemental Materials” dropdown list.
- Use the Map to Success (thanks to Northwestern Michigan College) to help your 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 and other OER evaluation tools.
- Get help assessing an open textbook or other OER with the Faculty Guide and OER Checklist [PDF]
- If you’re interested in creating OER, see the OER Workflow diagram (thanks to Billy Meinke at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Outreach College)
Let us know if you’re using an open textbook, open course materials, or other OER in your course.
ZTC Programs – open textbooks in action
In 2017, BCcampus launched a challenge for local institutions to develop a program with zero textbook costs (ZTC). Funded by the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills, and the Hewlett Foundation, three institutions were awarded funding for their programs:
- Kwantlen Polytechnic University
- Thompson Rivers University
- The Justice Institute of British Columbia
Since then, several B.C. post-secondary institutions have implemented–or are working toward–establishing one or more programs with no textbook and/or educational resource costs. For a complete list of ZTC programs in the province, see Zero Textbook Cost Programs in B.C.