Redesign OER for the Learning Commons Website

Project Title	Redesign OER for the Learning Commons Website
Principal Investigator	Alexandra Kuskowski
Co-Applicants	Emma MacFarlane, Learning Commons Coordinator, UBC Library Lucas Wright, Senior Educational Consultant, CTLT Rie Namba , Educational Resource Developer-Open Resources
Faculty	UBC Library
Funding Year	2022
Project Summary	The Learning Commons website (https://learningcommons.ubc.ca/) is an evolving collection of student- curated learning resources to support academic success and wellness. All resources on the Learning Commons website are created by student staff at the Learning Commons and are CC by SA 4.0 licensed. The website is a collaborative project between UBC Library/Chapman Learning Commons (CLC) and the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT). Through an emphasis on peer-led, student-driven initiatives and shared-decision making, we strive to enrich academic support and enhance the experience of all UBC students, with an emphasis on the undergraduate and commuter student learning experience. The website provides companion resources to in-person learning support services at the CLC. In the 2021 calendar year this website was accessed by 144,976 different users, with 266,923 unique pageviews, from 212 countries. Our website includes a number of learning skills resources, including toolkits on note-taking, time management, and more (https://learningcommons.ubc.ca/student-toolkits/). Currently, the learning skills toolkits featured on the website are Creative Commons licensed, but the content is not easily reusable due to its dependency on plugins and requirement of HTML skills. We are currently working on redesigning and developing our student toolkits in H5P to make them more easily reusable and accessible, so that they could be easily embedded to other websites, Canvas courses, or other educational resources. Currently several credit courses are embedding or linking to toolkits. For example, Arts Canvas template is linked to the Learning Commons home page. This will enable educators, students, and others to freely interact with and adapt our learning support content to suit different educational contexts, including embedding our resources as instructional content in courses. This project will benefit UBC students, faculty, staff and the broader community by making our educational support resources more sustainable, accessible, and adaptable. The Learning Commons website is a student-led project. We plan to hire a student with the funds provided to redesign our existing toolkits and to develop new student toolkits. All content created will be CC by SA 4.0 licensed. The principal applicant is the Library. CTLT will directly manage the day-to-day work of the student, due to the technical nature of the work involved; however, the student will also collaborate closely with Library staff and stakeholders to ensure alignment of content with the work of the CLC. This student will have a leading role in the process of our strategic website and resource planning and updates. We advocate for the value of employing student staff, whom we position as partners and as experts of the student experience. Student staff provide valuable contributions, insights, and feedback on the direction of resource development and alignment with broader student needs at the university. Furthermore, this student would learn a number of career and personal development competencies in critical thinking and leadership through web-based learning resource creation and experience with project management. This position will emphasize collaborative learning, professional skill development, EDID principles, and professional communication on a diverse team to create resources that serve diverse communities.
Grant type	Rapid Innovation
Funded Amount	$2,000