Open Pedagogy
Open educational practices using OER to support learning or the open sharing of teaching practices to improve education.
Open Educational Resources (OER)
Teaching, learning, and research materials openly licensed or in the public domain. These can include textbooks, courses, videos, and slides, as well as evaluation tools such as quizzes and assignments.
Open Online Course Collection (this site)
A library hosted by BCcampus, offering OER, including course syllabi, slides, assignments, and textbooks to help instructors shift their face-to-face courses to an online or blended model. Educators have unlimited permission to customize material that is free for students.
Open Textbooks
OER alternatives to traditional commercial textbooks. We are actively offering these resources to significantly reduce the financial burden on students. ($20 million in savings for B.C. students since inception)
| September 2020 | Two Business Communications courses |
| October 2020 | Introduction to University Writing, Virtual Earth Science field trips |
| November 2020 | Introduction to Psychology II, Business Marketing, Business Management, Financial Accounting I, Financial Accounting II, Mathematics of Finance, Statistics |
| January 2021 | Second year and upper level psychology |
At BCcampus, we are a supportive community of educational professionals, instructors, researchers, and learners. We’ve put together this collection of open educational resources (OER) to give instructors in the post-secondary sector of British Columbia the ability to flex their academic freedom by choosing alternatives to commercially produced courses and courseware.
Through this site you will find course materials, evaluation tools modules, and other resources that can be used to develop an open online course (OOC): freely accessible, openly licensed courses that can be used for teaching, learning, and assessment, with experiential learning opportunities baked in.
What it is: The Open Online Collection is a selection of assets that educators throughout the province can access for use in their classrooms, with their institution’s Learning Management System (LMS)
What it’s not: The Open Online Collection is not a platform for delivery of materials in the classroom. We’ll store the OER or link to the relevant resource, where appropriate. Working with your teaching and learning centre, you should be able to leverage your current technology to distribute the course materials to your students.
Each of the open online courses must adhere to the minimum requirements established by BCcampus, ensuring maximum accessibility for everyone. This will include:
- Following the principles of Universal Design for Learning;
- Incorporating Indigenous perspectives and pedagogies;
- Considering equity, diversity, and inclusion while using inclusive practices;
- Including the provision of resources necessary to complete the project, such as the assistance of an instructional designer, multimedia developer, librarian, and copy editor;
- Encouraging the use of activities that embrace open pedagogies.
This Checklist for Accessibility offers good information to demonstrate our expectations for accessibility.
Each of the open online courses has been peer-reviewed to ensure the materials are applicable to educators in B.C.
Why are we adamant advocates for open education? There are substantial financial benefits for students, but that’s not the only reason we support open.
- Affordability — We’re about to surpass $20 million in savings for students in B.C. through the use of open textbooks
- Accessibility — The resources in the BCcampus Open Textbook collection are built with intention to overcome barriers to accessibility, ensuring maximum access for as many readers as possible.
- Academic Freedom — OERs give faculty the ability to create courses with the materials they want to use, with the option to exclude information that doesn’t meet their requirements.