At their May 2019 meeting, the UBC Senate endorsed principles for digital learning materials used for assessment. The principles attempt to address affordability of compulsory materials, student agency and support for open resources and platforms. The endorsement of the principles contribute to UBC’s continued strategic support for open resources.
Examples of Open Scholarship
Open Scholarship is an umbrella term that encompasses some of the commonalities found in open education, open research, open access publishing, etc. Here’s a list of some examples of open scholarship:
- scholarly outputs such as educational resources, research findings, software, data, etc., made openly available and shared free of access barriers
- application of open copyright licenses, such as Creative Commons or GNU gpl licenses, to encourage reuse of created outputs
- use of existing open education resources, open source software, open data, or open platforms
- transparency and openness in scholarly processes and practices (e.g. open pedagogies, research methods, course design or development processes, etc)
- use of open access publishing, open code repositories, open scholarly or educational repositories to facilitate reuse
- collaboration with students as scholarly partners who have agency to be creators or share their work openly
- adoption of inclusive and accessible practices
- involvement in open government initiatives
- advocacy for open scholarship and open sharing of scholarly outputs and practices
Significant Use of Open Resources at UBC
In 2018, UBC published a new Strategic Plan that articulated the intention to expand the creation and dissemination of open educational resources as well as recognized the contributions that UBC faculty, student and staff have made in this area.
These contributions have had a significant impact: in academic year 2018, an estimated 15,388 students were impacted by courses using open resources in place of paid textbooks or readings. This replacement of traditional textbooks with open resources has potentially saved UBC students an estimated $1.5 to $2.3 million dollars this academic year. The wide diversity of UBC open education initiatives and efforts, from strong AMS advocacy and innovative instructor efforts to increased strategic support and funding, is helping to ensure that the adoption and use of open resources continues to be a significant practice at UBC.
UBC SoTL Dissemination Fund to Support Open Access
Great to see that UBC’s amazing scholarly work in teaching & learning will be available to more people: the new SoTL Dissemination Fund will help with fees related to open access publishing (and travel): https://isotl.ctlt.ubc.ca/sotl-dissemination-fund/ … Deadline is December 18
Open Snippets
It looks like the 2018 AMS Academic Experience Survey (AES) has officially been published and one interesting finding is that 86% of undergrad respondents reported that they have used open educational resources in lieu of textbooks at least once.
The Ubyssey covers the expanding conversation around the affordability of learning materials, including the cost of online assessment materials, and mentions open educational resources as having a role to play in possible mitigation strategies.
Meanwhile, OpenCon 2018 will be in Toronto this year — OpenCon is an international open ed, open data, open access event for students and “early career” professionals. Interested folks have to apply to be able to attend as they attempt to “bring together a diverse, representative, and engaged group of participants, with travel scholarships available to most participants”.