Instructors at UBC and beyond can now search through a new curated database full of openly accessible teaching and learning materials. The UBC OER Collection showcases UBC open educational resources (OER) in a searchable interface to support both UBC faculty and the general community in incorporating open educational resources and practices into their curriculum. Developed in partnership with the UBC Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT), UBC Library and UBC Okanagan Library, the collection is one of the many curated resources currently offered by Open UBC.
Each year, the UBC community produces an abundance of open educational resources (OER), from textbooks to course projects, workshops to tools. But until recently, discovering these materials online was a challenge akin to finding an openly licensed needle in a whole field of copyright haystacks. These open learning materials, created by UBC instructors for the courses they teach or to assist other instructors in their teaching practices, are published in a large variety of online spaces that include UBC web properties, but also sites like Wikipedia and GitHub, or open publishing platforms like OpenStax and PressBooks. Gathering up all these learning materials into a central, searchable database has been a long-held goal for Open UBC, which formed in 2015 in response to the growing interest in open scholarship and the importance of raising awareness and fostering a better understanding of open practices at UBC.
“I am very excited about the new UBC OER Collection, which provides a single place to easily find open education resources and projects developed by UBC students, faculty, and staff. This website not only makes it easier to find UBC-created OER that one can use in one’s own teaching and learning practices, but also to connect with other people working on OER projects to ask questions, seek advice, or possibly collaborate in the future. There are so many people doing wonderful work in open education at UBC, and I am looking forward to learning more about that work as people add to the growing collection!” Christina Hendricks, Professor of Teaching, Philosophy Academic Director, Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology and member of the Open UBC Working Group.
The learning materials included in the collection are all teaching and learning resources, developed for course and professional development settings, and made freely available through the public domain or open copyright licenses.
The UBC OER Collection includes 46 items openly accessible and reusable courses, modules, textbooks, lesson plans, presentations, tests, animations, and other tools, and the team at Open UBC would like to see the collection to continue to expand. Open UBC is seeking submissions to the collection from the UBC community. Submissions which meet the Collection’s criteria can be made through the collection website using a submission form. While submissions to the collection are limited to creators within the UBC community, the resources in the databases are accessible to everyone, providing the dual benefits of increasing the reach of existing work produced by UBC instructors and contributing to the global open educational community.
Learn more about the UBC OER Collection.
The Alma Mater Society, Student’s Union UBC Okanagan and Open UBC invite UBC faculty, staff and students to contribute open educational resources to the UBC OER Collection as part of a multi-campus challenge, starting March 7.
The UBC OER Collection Challenge is an exciting way for faculties and departments to compete while contributing to a vital new open database.
The competition closes on April 31, 2022 at 5:00 p.m. PT.