2022 OER Fund Evaluation Snapshot

Introduction

The UBC Vancouver Open Educational Resources (OER) Fund, established through the UBC Academic Excellence Fund, aims to support affordable and inclusive access to learning materials through the adoption, adaptation, development, and integration of open educational resources in UBCV credit courses. In 2019, UBCV initially committed $1 million over four years to the UBCV OER Fund. As of spring 2022, the Fund has provided $650,076 in OER grant funding for 61 projects across 11 different faculties.

OER are defined as “teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use. Generally, this permission is granted by use of an open license (for example, a Creative Commons license) which allows anyone to freely use, adapt and share the resource—anytime, anywhere.” OER are an important strategy for providing equitable access to learning materials as they are free for both students and instructors and are often available in a variety of digital formats. Additionally, OER have open copyright licenses that enable instructors to edit and modify the resources in order to provide meaningful materials adapted for their specific teaching contexts and students without fear of copyright infringement.

The OER Fund consists of two grant pathways:

OER Implementation Grants (up to $25,000) for faculty who wish to incorporate open educational resources as required materials into their UBCV credit courses. OER Implementation grants are adjudicated on an annual basis.
OER Rapid Innovation Grants (up to $2,000) for innovative activities that increase open educational resource development, awareness and capacity building at UBCV. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis until the year’s funds are exhausted.

OER Fund Principles and Evaluation

Increase the creation, adaptation, adoption, and integration of high-quality OER, including assessment materials, in UBC credit courses.
Reduce student costs for learning materials and assessments.
Enable instructors to modify, edit, or adapt high-quality OER to fit their unique specifications and goals in order to help provide meaningful, contextualized learning materials for UBC students.
Engage with the UBC community to increase awareness of OER.
Grow faculty and staff capacity at UBC to support and sustain OER activities.

To determine whether these principles are being met, an evaluation of the OER Fund Program was conducted. The goal of the evaluation was to:

To provide transparency and share a collective snapshot of activity and resources supported by the OER Fund,
To systematically collect evidence of OER impacts on students and on the teaching practices of faculty,
To be able to identify specific approaches or contextual factors that lead to successful and effective OER Fund projects,
To use evidence to inform decision making at the leadership level, strategic priority setting and adjudication processes.

To complete this evaluation, data was combined from the following sources:

Project consultations and proposals,
Closure reports¹ which all OER Fund holders are required to complete within one month of their project funding end date. From February 2021-May 2022, 25 responses were received. Project leads were invited to share their experiences and perceptions related to: project outputs, teaching and learning impacts, sharing and collaboration of resources, resource sustainability, and supports received,
A review of the published resources developed by the fund holders.

In this report, we share a summary of the findings from these sources.

Funding Overview

Between September 2019 and May 2022, the OER Fund provided $650,076 in funding for 25 OER Implementation Grant projects and 36 OER Rapid Innovation Grant Projects (61 total projects). Table 1 presents the amount of funding faculties received for OER projects. Approximately 64% ($415,512) of this grant funding was, or is, used to employ UBC students to support the development and implementation of OER.

Table 1. OER funding provided based on Faculty.

Faculty	Funding amount ($)	OER Implementation Grants	OER Rapid Innovation Grants
Applied Science	102,382	5	1
Arts	253,589	9	15
Education	25,900	1	1
Forestry	29,999	1	3
Land and Food Systems	19,294	1	1
Library	4,724	0	3
Medicine	82,962	3	5
Pharmaceutical Sciences	1,997	0	1
Sauder	25,000	1	0
Science	80,970	3	6
Vantage	23,258	1	0

OER Rapid Innovation Grants are non-competitive; while projects must contain a primary focus on UBCV impacts, proposals are eligible to be funded as long as they demonstrate an alignment with the principles and requirements of the OER Fund. In contrast, OER Implementation Grants are competitive and undergo an adjudication process involving students, faculty members, librarians, and members of the Open UBC Working Group. In the first funding year for the OER Implementation Grants (2020), 20 proposals were received and 10 were approved for funding. In the following two years, fewer proposals were received, reflecting shifting faculty prioritization away from extra project work due to the need to focus on remote teaching during this period of COVID-19. In 2021, nine proposals were received and seven were approved for funding; similarly, in 2022,10 proposals were received and nine were funded.

OER Fund grant holders represent a wide variety of teaching and research faculty, librarians, and students across the UBCV campus. As can be seen in Table 2, the OER Rapid Innovation Grants generated more engagement from research stream faculty as compared to those applying for OER Implementation Grants.

Table 2. OER fund grant holders by appointment.

Appointment	OER Implementation Grant Holders	OER Rapid Innovation Grant Holders
Educational Leadership Stream (including Lecturers)	19	16
Research Stream	6	15
Librarian	–	3
Student	–	2

OER Formats, Platforms, and Licenses

The 61 total projects supported thus far by the OER Fund engaged in a wide range of OER development and implementation activity. Many projects incorporated multiple types of resource formats into their OER (e.g., an open textbook that includes video and interactive formative problem sets); however, the most common type of primary formats were open textbooks and web based resources (see Table 3 for a breakdown).

Table 3. Format of OER projects (n = 61).

Primary format	Percentage
Open textbook	45.8
Web resources	20.3
Multimedia	13.6
Course modules	10.2
Open pedagogy assignments²	5.1
Problem bank	3.4
Open event	1.7

Many of the projects used multiple platforms for creating and publishing their OER (e.g., a PressBook open text that includes embedded videos and H5P elements). Figure 1 shows a breakdown of the primary OER platform used. As illustrated, the most common platforms for developing and publishing OER were Pressbooks and WordPress.

Figure 1. Breakdown of the primary OER platforms used.

While UBC centrally hosts many of the different open platforms (WordPress, UBC Wiki, H5P, WebWork, etc), some are hosted outside of UBC. Specifically, Pressbooks, which was used by the highest number of projects, is hosted by BCcampus. While the UBC Library provides project support for the use of Pressbooks, the high utilization of a platform that has no hosting support from UBC represents a potential risk if the current status changes.

OER Fund projects were required to publish their resources with an open copyright license (e.g., Creative Commons) assigned to allow for reuse, remix, revision and redistribution of the content for educational purposes. Table 4 presents the copyright licenses used, as reported in the closure reports by both OER Implementation and OER Rapid Innovation grant holders. Completed projects preferred licenses that restricted commercial use of their developed resources (65 percent of projects) and that required any derivative works to be shared under an alike open license (52 percent of projects). Licenses that prohibit derivative works were only used in one case where students created the resources as part of their course work.

Table 4. Creative Commons licenses³ used by completed projects (n = 25).

License type	Count
CC-BY	4
CC-BY-NC	6
CC-BY-ND	1
CC-BY-SA	4
CC-BY-NC-SA	9

Please see the OER Fund Funded Projects Directory for an overview of all funded projects.

OER Fund Project Outcomes

OER Implementation Grant holders who have filed completion reports (N = 10)⁴ were asked to report on areas impacted by their projects. Ninety percent of grant holders reported that their OER projects resulted in increased student use of and access to course resources with forty percent indicating that student use and access had increased “A great deal”. Additionally, the majority of Implementation Grant holders indicated that their projects exposed students to different ways of learning as well as increased student engagement with the materials. Figure 2 presents the areas reported to have been impacted, at least to some degree.

Figure 2. Reported degree of impact of OER project, for projects reporting an impact.

When asked about the project evaluation strategies that took place to assess these impacts, many project leads reported conducting surveys to understand the impact of their OER. Some highlights of the evaluations reports include:

“Students do seem to be interacting more with the open resource than they did with the paid textbook: the proportion of students who report never reading the text dropped from 29% to 12%, and the proportion who said they read it three or more times rose from 34% to 50%” (Based on pre-post surveys)
“[Students] mentioned that the [open] book is very aligned with the material taught in class, as well as they liked the ways the topics are covered in the book. They also talked about how much they appreciated different types of questions and having the fully worked out solutions to the questions.” (Based on student conversations)
“Students made significant improvement on awareness of [course topics].” (Based on pre-post student survey data)
“When using the [previous] commercial textbook, students report mostly accessing copies of the solutions. With [the open textbook], they most frequently report accessing the textbook.”

Student Reach and Cost Savings

Roughly half (49.2%) of all grant holders (n=61) proposed projects where 100 or 200 level courses would be their primary course targets, with approximately 40% projects targeting resources for 300, 400, and 500 level courses and 10% not having specific course implementations⁵. As reported by completed projects in both granting streams (n = 25) and using PAIR enrolment data, an estimated 5,500 students were enrolled in 42 course or course sections that used OER supported by the OER Fund. The replacement of paid course materials with OER has potentially saved UBCV students an estimated $243,300 to $355,500 dollars⁶.

These estimates only capture the activity that took place from 2020 Winter Term 1 to 2021 Winter Term 2. As more projects come to completion, and as cost savings are carried into future terms, it is expected that both the reach and cost savings of the OER Fund will continue to grow. All project proposals were asked to describe their sustainability strategies and continuing use and cost savings will be tracked as part of the Open UBC Snapshot.

When considering the impact of OER on their students, project leads reported that that cost savings was an important aspect of the OER:

“The [data analysis] showed that some students avoided buying the previous paid textbook because they were skeptical of its use in the course. Several students in the second survey noted being pleased with the availability of the open resource.”
“A little under 20% of students in 2019/20 reported not buying the [previous] textbook because the cost was too high, a barrier eliminated by the open resource.” (Based on student survey data)
“[For] the importance of the textbook being free, the most frequent response was 10/10 for importance.”
“Having a resource tailored to fit our syllabus eliminated much of the usual discussion about what is and is not expected to be a part of the course. This also caused less confusion among students studying on their own …. During discussions on Piazza, I could cite the books and provide links without worrying that students didn’t have access to them.

Cost savings were achieved through projects that replaced paid resources with OER as well as through projects that developed OER to avoid using additional or new fee-based resources. Not all OER Fund projects were designed to result in cost savings. In such projects, instructors reported that the motivation for their projects included:

to supplement and to fill gaps of their existing resources;
to engage students in open pedagogy projects where learners develop open resources themselves.

Impact on Teaching

Those who received OER Implementation Grant support were also asked to report on how the project/funding impacted their teaching. A few responses focused on the fact that because resources/activities were self-directed (e.g., accessible to students in their own time and meant to be accessed outside of class time), instructors were free to use class time for other content/activities. In addition to this, instructors reported:

“The course resources are highly transferrable and two of my colleagues have chosen to teach with these new materials in their course sections.”
“Seeing the benefits to the students who have worked on the project [creating OER], related to their learning and understanding in [this subject area], has made me consider the pedagogical benefit of doing this kind of work (and exploring it as part of regular course work).”
“It has built capacity in building online resources including use of GitHub, Jupyter notebooks and Pressbooks.”
“The project helped me to partner fully with a student, who has been made a second author of the text. It allowed me to provide mentorship and training in the creation of academic knowledge. However, [the text] was difficult to develop while teaching.”

Challenges/Barriers to Project Success

Both OER Implementation and Rapid Innovation Fund holders were asked to describe challenges/barriers to meeting their project goals. A common concern across many reports included the overwhelming time commitment:

“Time management was challenging during the project. Writing new parts to the book, proof-reading every new part and thinking about how to improve existing text/questions takes a lot of time during a busy semester.”
“re-doing a syllabus is a big ask”
“I spent hundreds of hours shooting, composing, editing the video”

The co-ordination and commitment from others was also a challenging component:

“[A] barrier was inertia from the instructor in charge of the course, who preferred to change as little as possible.”
“we did not get as robust feedback from students and faculty as we had hoped. We had sent multiple requests to numerous faculty […] with very little response.”
“I found that I need to work on my management skills, particularly my management of others. When giving out tasks or things for students to work on, I was not really indicating what outcomes I desired in a specific enough manner.”

Additionally, a couple of respondents spoke of challenges with sharing open-access materials more broadly when the materials are implemented into specific learning management system platforms:

“We can (and have) easily share all course materials with anyone who uses edX.edge, but importing them into other platforms is challenging.”
“Because [the modules] were designed for a specific course in mind, we implemented them directly into Canvas, which is not very translatable to other platforms.”

Finally, the first funding cycle of the OER Implementation Grants in March 2020 coincided with the University’s transition to remote teaching due to COVID-19. Subsequent funding and project development cycles continue to be affected by the pandemic’s impacts on teaching and learning and many respondents also noted the challenges this has created:

“An unanticipated factor was the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic would so deeply affect the culture and work of our department in the 2020-2021 academic year. Whereas the project plan envisioned engagement with faculty and staff on the issues surrounding OER, the day-to-day aspects of teaching, learning, and research were overwhelmed by the ongoing, and to some extent worsening, impacts of the pandemic on our courses and for ourselves as educators and students, especially in the winter term of 2020 and into early 2021.”

Project Growth/Sustainable Strategies

Both OER Implementation and OER Rapid Innovation grant holders were asked to report on how they will maintain, update, or improve the project over time, beyond the funding period of the project. Many individuals reported the intention to continue making the resources available to students/integrate them into future courses, and to update them as student feedback is received:

“I intend to deploy the survey at the end of every [course] offering with the goal of continuous improvement. I also intend to revise the textbook each summer based on the feedback provided in the survey, as well as to incorporate the most recent examples of student knowledge products.”

Other respondents indicated:

An interest in engaging additional co-authors/collaborators to build further content or revise current content:
- “Develop H5P components for the textbook to further enhance the readers’ learning experience by making the content more dynamic and interactive.”
- “Listing the resource on [OER] repositories will also allow us to more easily solicit reviews and feedback on the resource, which will further future collaboration and provide crucial data for updating, improving, and expanding the resource.”
- “I will need to find a way to engage students in the class to contribute to the updating of the content on Wiki.”
- “The departmental wiki could also be just a first step toward encouraging faculty, staff, and students to contribute to the UBC OER Collection as a way to gain greater visibility and use for our OER.”
Additional funding was being sought to expand on exercises or hire additional supports (e.g., RAs) to complete updates:
- “[Further funding] will enable us to solicit more robust usage and feedback data, as well as support the creation of new scenes and expanding/improving the resource for use in more diverse settings.”
In many cases, the respondents indicated that they themselves or the course instructor would be responsible for updating and maintaining the resources:
- “Generally, maintenance and improvements can be performed by anyone who teaches the course. Other department members have become comfortable with edX and will be able to modify or improve materials as needed.”
- “Resources at CTLT and UBC library were used to learn about editing and daily upkeep of a publication on pressbooks medium. As the instructor, I can easily add content and links to new content.”
A few individuals explicitly mentioned goals of increasing the accessibility and inclusivity of the resource in future.
- “To review the design and content of the textbook with the goal of increasing accessibility and inclusivity (e.g., translation to other services and transcription of media for the hearing impaired).”

All respondents of the OER Implementation Grant closure report (n = 10) indicated that they plan on expanding upon their OER project. To do so, the respondents indicated that they planned to:

Expand the content materials to additional course sections/modules (e.g., add more examples, chapters, etc)
Make the content accessible for all students (e.g., browser-friendly formatting)
Find ways to share the resources and collaborate with others on revisions/updates
- “Talking about and sharing the resources more broadly. Collaborating with students, alumni, and faculty to create more resources and perhaps work on a textbook that builds on this project.”
- “I plan to solicit further instructors (within and outside of UBC) to use and contribute to the materials.”

OER Awareness and Capacity

According to project completion reports, from both OER Implementation Grants and OER Rapid Innovation Grants (N = 25), all fund holders planned on participating in future open projects/education, even if they didn’t have concrete next steps decided. Future goals included:

Releasing an open textbook
Expanding on the current materials (e.g., creating open homework question banks based on the developed open text, develop open lab content)
Revise additional courses/modules to use OER
- “I am already planning to develop OER materials for my [course] next year with other instructors in the department.”
Increasing OER awareness
- “engage with the broader OER community to further grow and improve the resource”
- “develop[ing] a Blended/Online Learning Community of Practice”
- “Develop OER for my partner organizations [across Canada]”
- “Encourage/help others to openly share other content and courses”

The main challenge for continuing this work included a need for additional funding/supports:

“[T]he funding for this project is fairly small as compared to the final desired outcome that I had in mind. I now have many assignments and videos that are not yet ready for publication in the textbook. I hope to apply for a small TLEF in the fall to assist in making the textbook more complete.”
“I’d like to see more workshops for graduate students that introduce open publishing concepts as part of a professional and scholarly writing practice.”

Completion reports from OER Implementation Grants (n = 10), indicated that the OER fund prepared them to embark on other OER projects:

“It has built capacity in building online resources including use of GitHub, Jupyter notebooks and Pressbooks. It has also enabled further exploration in what other OER exist within my discipline.”
“It allowed me to see the potential of co-creating work with student partners and made me aware of the support available to create OER materials.”
“The connections with people in the library have been really helpful — I now know that I have experts who can help me with copyright questions and searching for open resources.”

Grant holders reported having shared their experiences with their OER projects in 13 conference presentations or publications as well in blog posts, social media, departmental chats, and CTLT Institute sessions.

Supports Offered

In addition to project grants, the OER Fund also provided over $24,000 in funding to the UBC Library for the creation of an open education student librarian position dedicated to providing direct support for OER projects. In the last year, this position has supported 12 projects ranging from developing an OER sharing and release plan, creating style sheets for open texts, formatting Pressbooks, accessibility reviews, finding OER for courses, and completing copyright reviews and open license analysis. Additionally, this past year, the student position conducted 58 consultations for faculty and staff engaging in OER creation and advocacy and offered 8 workshops on open text publishing and Pressbooks.

Since the launch of the OER Fund, the CTLT and UBC Library have co-developed a variety of OER resources such as the Program for Open Scholarship and Education, the UBC Open Text Publishing Guide, Open UBC, and the OER Accessibility Toolkit. Additionally, CTLT and UBC Library developed and hosted over 75 workshops which saw registration numbers of up to 1,600 faculty. These sessions focus on topics including:

OER grant proposal development
Identifying and sourcing existing OER
OER and accessibility
Learning technology and OER publishing platforms
Guidance on open licenses, such as Creative Commons
Copyright review of third-party materials
OER project management
Learning design for OER
OER project evaluation
OER dissemination and repository identification

Figure 3 shows reports of helpfulness of various support services, as reported to be utilized by OER Implementation Grant holders. The most utilized and highest rated support service was for pre-funding proposal development. Additionally, post funding UBC Library services such as copyright and Pressbooks publishing support were also noted as being helpful by grant holders. Some areas of available support were not utilized, such as support for Indigenization, due to a lack of projects with a focus in that area.

Figure 3. Reported degree of helpfulness of various UBC support services.

For OER Implementation Grant holders who indicated that they received support from a UBC unit (e.g., CTLT, Arts ISIT, UBC Library) (n = 9), all reported feeling they had adequate support to help work with the platforms used (e.g., Pressbooks, WordPress, Wiki, etc.). For example, respondents noted:

Yes, CTLT and the OER staff were extremely helpful, in particular in navigating the technology and developing the evaluations.
Yes. Whenever I had a problem, I could simply reach out to [the] UBC Library and help was immediately available.

OER Fund Program Success

For OER Implementation Fund holders, 70% of report respondents indicated that the funding was sufficient. Four respondents also indicated that they had supplemental or additional funding provided from: a co-op subsidy, WorkLearn funding, a TLEF grant, department support and BCCampus. Those who indicated that more funds would have been useful (n = 3) indicated that additional funding was needed for: the expansion of the original proposal to a second course, GRA hours to replace copyrighted images previously used in course materials, greater course release amounts as mentoring and supervision GRAs/URAs requires significant time resources.

When asked what they felt was the most valuable part of being an OER Fund recipient, the main themes from respondents (n = 25) from closure reports from both kinds of grants included:

The collaboration with students.
- “Reflecting on the course and resources with students as part of the team in developing resources.”
- “Creating knowledge with a student partner and seeing the possibility of doing this in the future.”
- “My two student assistants helped me to retain the student perspective on the work throughout – a perspective that I believe contributed greatly to the success of the revisions.”
- “Many of our doctoral students were introduced to OER concepts and examples, which expands their imagination about the future of higher education research and teaching and how they might participate in it.”
The funding to support specific collaborations (e.g., course buyouts; hiring students/GTAs).
- “Creating OER resources that were informed by multiple experts and allowed for a variety of voices and experiences to be presented. The resources that were created included perspectives, voices and experiences of equity deserving groups, which are often left out of traditional textbook resources.”
- “The funding allowed me to collaborate with others and generate more funding (given that we had an idea that was already considered fundable). As a result, we produced much more content than I expected.”
- “The grant provided an opportunity to develop a true collaboration between students, faculty, and the library.”
- “Funding to collaborate with scholars and video editing professionals.”
- “We were able to financially compensate a graduate student from a marginalized community for their work on this project, which has enabled the project to operate in keeping with equity and diversity values held by the project team.”
Access to support resources.
- “so many resources (e.g., CTLT and UBC OER Librarian) were available (willingly) to assist. The project was quite easy with their support.”
- “Working with the UBC Library.”
- “The library was super supportive and motivating”
- “Having someone in UBC Open Ed believe in us and our project was the most valuable aspect of RIG. We just needed a little bit of funding to create a small sample to demonstrate our vision of this [resource]. Now we have a small pilot we can shop around for additional funding.”
- “the support we have received and the feeling of being a valuable part of this community of people striving to further OERs.”
- “I learned about the available resources such as similar books on open stax and pressbooks and I was able to adapt many of the background information from this resource without having to re-write it from the beginning.”
Skill development.
- “the technical foundations that can be used for other projects.”
- “[Students] reported that the project helped them to build their CVs and further their learning on OER and risk communication.”
- “I learned about what OER sources were! And I realized I could design a course without a textbook (something that was daunting to me in the past).”

Conclusion

The 61 projects that were funded during the first three years of the OER Fund have led to an increase in awareness, capacity, and use of OER. While the majority of projects are still in progress, completion report data indicates that the use of OER is leading to cost savings, increased access to course materials, and pedagogical benefits. These impacts will continue as more projects reach completion and as the developed OER, as supported by the OER Fund, are utilized in future terms.

The 2022/23 academic year represents the last last year of the original funding period for the OER Fund. Although confirmation for the continuation of OER funding is still pending, there are a number of ongoing and emerging topics within higher education where the use of OER will be an important strategy, both broadly and specifically at UBC, to help ensure equitable access to learning. These topics include:

Accessibility: OER that are not accessible are not open, inclusive, nor equitable for all users. Recognizing this fact, the OER Fund was developed with a requirement that all materials developed with support from the OER Fund follow the guidelines in the Open UBC OER Accessibility Toolkit. As part of a pilot, in Fall 2022 the OER Fund will elevate accessibility support through the creation of a role specifically dedicated to supporting accessibility in open education projects at UBC. This one-year pilot will also help identify themes, needs, and gaps in supporting accessibility in OER and/or other teaching and learning projects as well as make recommendations for future support.

Student Affordability: According to the 2020 AMS Academic Experience survey, the average amount UBC undergraduate students spent annually on textbooks was $884, and 28 percent of undergraduates reported that they frequently or often went without textbooks or other learning materials due to cost. In 2022, the UBC Student Affordability Task Force stated that learning material costs “have been considerably reduced by the widespread adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER), that have been supported through grant funding programs across both campuses”. The Task Force recommended that UBC “[e]nsure continuation of funding streams for the adoption, adaptation, creation and/or integration of OER into credit-based courses.” In March 2022, the UBC Board of Governors approved the recommendations from the UBC Student Affordability Task Force, including support for OER.

Fee-based Assessment Tools: In principle, assessments in a course should be covered by tuition costs and the UBC Senate is currently seeking consultation on draft policy V-131: Use of Digital Materials for Assessment which would limit the use of third-party vendor-based platforms and materials in which students are charged to access assessments. The current draft of the policy states that “[b]y 2027-2028 academic session, the goal is to eliminate such costs for students, either through continued development and adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) or by absorbing costs centrally and/or within Faculties”.

Equitable access to course materials will continue to be an important issue in higher education and learning, and providing an ongoing commitment to increasing the scope, and sustaining the use, of OER at UBC will have positive impacts on student learning and experiences.

Notes

¹The closure reports for each grant stream were similar but not identical due to the differences between grant requirements and goals. Please see OER Fund: Completion Reports for a template of each report.

²OER Fund Grants can be used to support projects that involve a blend of learner-centric teaching practices and participatory technologies which emphasize students as creators of knowledge and contributors to the OER. For more information about Open Pedagogy, please visit this resource from the UBC Program on Open Scholarship and Education: What is Open Pedagogy?

³For more information about specific Creative Commons licenses, please visit this resource from the UBC Program on Open Scholarship and Education: What are the Different Types of Creative Commons Licenses?

⁴Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, a number of the projects funded in the initial three years of the Fund have experienced delays.

⁵OER Rapid Innovation Grants can be used for a wide variety of OER activities ia wide range of activities and events that seek to engage the UBC community in increasing awareness and capacity around OER while OER Implementation Grants have a requirement that projects must result in OER being used in as required learning material within UBCV courses.

⁶This range reflects alternative buying options available for students including new, used and rental textbooks and is based on the approach used by the BC Open Textbook project to estimate savings. The high end of the range is based on new textbook prices and course enrolments while the low end value is calculated based on an average cost of $100 per student per textbook.