About

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.

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. BCcampus will then provide the course developer(s) access to a shared Google folder, which will help guide the development of the course to meet the expectations of BCcampus.

Submission

A completed course should be submitted using the Google folder provided by BCcampus. In addition to completing the necessary elements within the Google folder, a final report will also be submitted to BCcampus.

Quality Assurance Begins

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.

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 projects@bccampus.ca.

Peer Content Review

Each course in the OER Collection will go through a peer content review by a subject matter expert using the rubric provided. BCcampus will be offering a $500 honorarium for subject matter experts who would like to review the content of courses.

To apply to be a peer content reviewer, please provide the following information to projects@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.