York University faculty and staff who are interested in learning more about how to incorporate open educational practices into their teaching can register now for the York University Libraries’ four-week course on open education and open educational resources (OER).
OER are free teaching and learning materials that use open licences, like Creative Commons, allowing instructors to freely reuse, adapt and modify available teaching resources for their own purposes. Incorporating OER into teaching also provides students with access to learning materials from the first day of class, in addition to many other student and instructor benefits, including:
- cost-efficiency: OER provide students with free learning materials (or low cost if printed);
- customizable: instructors can adapt OER and modify them for their courses;
- contributing to student success: OER can be accessed by students from the first day of classes, improving their access to course learning materials; and
- supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs): adapting or creating OER helps support UN SDG 4: Quality Education and UN SDG 10: Reduced Inequality.
York University’s open education course was initially developed in 2020 for Academic Innovation Fund (AIF) project leads by Sarah Coysh, associate dean of the York University Libraries’ Digital Engagement & Strategy Division, and Stephanie Quail, director of the Libraries’ Open Scholarship Department. The course supported AIF leads in turning a component of their AIF into an OER. Starting in 2022, the course was opened up to all interested faculty and staff at York University. Quail will be teaching this year’s iteration of the course.
“If you’re interested in using OER in your teaching, I highly recommend taking this course,” says Quail. “It will provide you with training, practical guidance and resources to help you get started in incorporating open educational practices into your courses.”
This fully online and asynchronous course will run for four weeks, beginning on Monday, Nov. 11 and wrapping up on Monday, Dec. 9. The course also includes two optional Zoom check-in sessions with the instructor. The following topics are covered in the course:
- Module 1 – OER 101: What is OER? Including examples of OER and how they benefit students and faculty.
- Module 2 – Copyright and Creative Commons licenses: An exploration of the range of open licenses available to creators and how to choose a license for an OER project.
- Module 3 – Finding and evaluating OER: How to find OER for your subject area and evaluate them.
- Module 4 – Creating or adapting pre-existing OER: Learn about OER project management techniques, accessibility considerations, and OER tools and platforms.
“Engaging with this course in 2023 was such a lovely mix of the practical and philosophical,” says Lisa Endersby, an educational developer at York’s Teaching Commons. “Open education can be challenging to wrap your head around, so I appreciated the clear, concise content delivery to help us explore the best way to ensure what we were creating was open and accessible. I also really enjoyed our in-course conversations, particularly as a way to explore the what, why and how of creating an OER component.”
Those looking to expand their knowledge of open educational practices and incorporate OER into their teaching can register now for the Libraries’ 2024 open education course.
With files from Stephanie Quail