Through this site you will find course materials, evaluation tools modules, and other resources that can be used to develop an open course: 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 Course 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 Course 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.
All open course materials 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.
Proposal approved
Once a course proposal is accepted, the course developer will be notified and an agreement will be drafted to outline the deliverables for the course.
Submission
Once a course is completed and submitted to BCcampus, the quality assurance process will begin.
Course Quality Review
The course quality review will be done by an instructional designer, who will use the Course Quality Framework developed for this purpose. This framework represents our best current thinking about essential factors for course quality, including First Peoples Principles of Learning [PDF, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, accessibility, and representation [PDF]. The instructional designer will work with the course developer to make any necessary changes to the course in order to pass the course quality review.
View the Course Quality Framework document
Payment Issued
Payment for the course will be issued once the course quality review is complete and all necessary changes have been made, as advised by the instructional designer overseeing the course quality review.
Course Added
A course will only be added to the OER Collection once it has passed the course quality review process and final quality checks by the BCcampus Production Team.
Share & 5 Rs
As courses are added to the OER Collection, BCcampus will provide updates in the BCcampus newsletter. If you have reused, repurposed, or revised one of our open courses, we would love to hear from you at opentext@bccampus.ca.
Peer Content Review
Once a course is published in the Open Course Collection it is eligible for peer content reviews by subject matter experts using the rubric provided. BCcampus will be offering a $500 honorarium for subject matter experts from BC and Yukon institutions who would like to review the content of courses.
To apply to be a peer content reviewer, please provide the following information to opentext@bccampus.ca.
- Name
- Institution
- Courses taught
- For which course would you like to do a peer content review?
- Date of expected completion
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 have surpassed $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.
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)