One of the most significant barriers for growing open education at an institution is time. Too often open education is “side of desk” work. What if there were some monetary resources to take open education from the side of the desk to the center? This was the intention behind the BCcampus Time Investment Grant – providing “center desk” time to move open education forward at institutions in the Northern and Interior regions of B.C.
Post by Carolee Clyne, open education advisor, regional representative and Ross McKerlich, project manager, micro credentials, at BCcampus
We received 13 proposals, each of which contained fabulous ideas. After evaluation of the applications, we awarded four grants: two for the Interior area and two for the Northern area.
Roen Janyk, Web Services Librarian at Okanagan College, was successful in her grant proposal to invest 150 hours between now and June 30 on activities such as increasing open-education awareness, improving open-education adoption statistics, developing open-education strategies, and completing an open-education action plan. The second successful application in the Interior was from Dinesh Ramoo, Psychology professor at Thompson Rivers University (TRU). He proposed a creation/remix of a needed textbook on psycholinguistics. This new open educational resource (OER) incorporates Indigenization and diversity in an exciting new resource and shows the potential of open education, which will be sure to spur on other faculty at TRU. Dr. Ramoo will now have time to devote to this project and will be able to advocate for open education among his colleagues.
In the Northern region, Scott van Dyk and Annette Sorensen, both Business instructors at Coast Mountain College, were awarded the Time Investment Grant to co-develop open materials that provide Indigenous content relevant to Business Law and Ethics courses. These materials will enable instructors to have the resources to incorporate appropriate Indigenous content and develop new resources as needed.
“In our time teaching at Coast Mountain College, we have strived to Indigenize our curriculum, including by incorporating Indigenous content,” said Scott van Dyk. “There has been a dearth of appropriate content in both Business Law and Business Ethics, with currently available textbooks giving little to no mention of relevant Indigenous content that is important to budding businesspersons and concerned citizens alike. Instructors that weren’t already subject-matter experts would have difficulty implementing meaningful discussions in their classrooms. With this project, we hope to meet this need and provide an accessible resource that will enrich both students’ and instructors’ understanding of this important topic area.”
Melissa Fournier, Work Integrated Learning Coordinator at College of New Caledonia, will oversee the development of student work-readiness OER and look at how this material can be integrated to enable broad use. This work will support students in preparing for experiential learning opportunities through innovative approaches.
“This a great support for development of work-integrated learning resources that are specific to our context in the North,” said Melissa Fournier. “Providing students with relevant learning is always our goal, and having cost-effective and up-to-date learning resources helps them access and experience opportunities. It is so important during these challenging times of remote learning and working to be responsive to diverse student needs and to support access to resources where possible.”
The BCcampus Time Investment Grant will help remove the barrier of time, which is ever present in open education work. The funded activities will impact students at these four institutions and kick-start open education work among faculty. In addition, the rest of the province and the world will benefit from the resources created.
