The UBCV OER Fund, established through the UBC Academic Excellence Fund in 2019, 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. At launch, UBCV committed $1-million over a four-year period to support OER initiatives.
OER Fund Principles
The UBC OER Fund is guided by the following principles, developed in consultation with student and faculty leadership at the UBCV campus:
- 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 capacity at UBC to support and sustain OER activities.
OER Fund Priorities
During this round of funding, we particularly welcome proposals that focus on the following areas:
- Projects that have high student impacts including, but not limited to: cost savings, number of students enrolled in courses where the resources are used, and the enhancement of student learning supported by the use of open resources and pedagogies.
- Implementation of OER into multi-section courses or multiple courses.
- Development and implementation of open test/quiz/problem banks and other interactive content that can be used for assessment.
- Support for increasing awareness of OER.
- Student involvement in the development and/or implementation of the open educational resources.
- Incorporation and adaptation of existing high quality open educational resources.
Grant Pathways
- OER Implementation Grants: Large grants of up to $25,000 for UBCV faculty who wish to incorporate OER as required materials into their UBCV credit courses.
- OER Rapid Innovation Grants: Small grants of up to $2,000, which are available to the UBCV community for innovative activities that increase OER development, awareness, and capacity building.
OER Fund Support
In-kind OER Fund Dedicated Support
- Strategist, Open Education Initiatives, CTLT
- Librarian, Open Education, UBC Library
- Open Education Student Librarian
- The CTLT Projects and Faculty Partnerships team, which supports the TLEF, will provide in-kind support to the committee/funding process for the OER Fund.
Examples of OER Support Available
The CTLT and UBC Library provide in-depth information, consultation, and support for open textbooks, open educational resources, and open homework options. The full schedule of OER Fund consulting sessions, as well as OER related workshops, is available on the CTLT Events Open Education Calendar.
| Support Category | Primary Unit | Support Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Application Consulting | Joint | Drop-in/scheduled consulting sessionsOER 101 workshopsIdentification of existing OERIdeation supportEvaluation plan developmentAnswering questions, emails, etc. |
| Funded Project Consulting | Joint | Regular meetings with principal applicants/project teamsAnswering questions/emails, etc.Sharing resources, etc. |
| Identification, Curation, and Evaluation of Existing OER | Library | Reviewing existing OER for specific disciplinesHelping teams evaluate for high qualityHelping to identify suitable third party media (images, figures, etc.) that can integrate into OER |
| OER Training & Capacity Development | Joint | Ongoing workshops, consulting, training, etc.Developing communities across projectsCreating student support and cohort opportunities across projectsIn-class course support for open pedagogy and student OER creation |
| Project management & OER Development Best Practice Support | Joint | Helping to develop project processesSupporting best practices (style guides, accessibility, peer review, etc.)Support and facilitation of resource development sprints, hackathons, etc.Project team organization |
| Technology & Platform Support (e.g., Canvas, Wiki, PressBooks, OJS, PreText, LaTeX, WeBWorK, etc.) | Joint | Training and support for using specific UBC platformsResource development (tutorials, guides, etc.) |
| Copyright Review and Support for Third-Party Materials | Library | Review of incorporated materials for copyright statusCreative Commons Licensure criteria conflictsCreative Commons attribution support |
| Indigenization Consulting | Joint | Consulting for best practices, project planning, and community engagementConsultation on digitizing and licensing of Indigenous and First Nations material |
| Instructional, Learning, Open Resource Design Support | CTLT | Effective design of open resources to support learningBest practices for inclusive learning, accessibility, UDL |
| Course Integration Support | CTLT | Identification of course touchpointsTechnical support for integrating resources into courses |
| Sharing, Archiving, and Discoverability Support | Library | Identification of open repositories suitable for resource sharing and archivingTechnical support for uploading resources to faculty selected repository toolsSupport for assigning metadata for discoverability |
| Evaluation Consulting/Support | CTLT | Evaluation plan implementation and supportEvaluation tool (survey, focus group) developmentData analysis |
For budget development:
- You can consult with CTLT to develop the budget for your project either at OER Fund Proposal Consultation drop-in sessions or by contacting Will Engle, Strategist, Open Education Initiatives, CTLT (will.engle@ubc.ca) to arrange a time for a private consultation.
- For open text or PressBook-based development projects, the UBC Library has created this resource [PDF] which contains time estimates for project development that can be used to help inform your budget.
