OCAD U Library 2017 Summer: Open Access

Educators and librarians met to discuss the future of OERs at the Open Education Ontario 2017 Summit at OCAD U. Image by David Porter (CC-BY).

What are OERs?

In Ontario there is a movement underway to develop an infrastructure for open textbooks and open educational resources. A reaction against the negative impact the high price of textbooks is having on student outcomes, Open educational resources – or OERs – have had great success in places like British Columbia where the BC Open Textbook Project has saved students millions of dollars since its inception by adopting 1,219 OERs at 33 or their institutions. Remixable and accessible by default, OERs use Creative Commons licensing supporting what David Wiley from Lumen Learning calls the 5 Rs of Open:

• Reuse–the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
• Revise–the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
• Remix–the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
• Redistribute–the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)
• Retain–the right to make, own, and control copies of the content

Call for Proposals

With funding from the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development, eCampus Ontario has issued two Calls for Proposals to Ontario post-secondary institutions:

Open Textbooks Initiative

Funding is available for the adaption, adoption and creation of Open Textbooks for Ontario in the areas of high-enrolment first and second-year courses, original French-language content, Indigenous studies content, trades and technical skills content, and content supporting the settlement of immigrants and refugees.

Digital Inclusion Research

Ontario Digital Service has provided funding to support researchers who wish to explore digital inclusion and related areas of focus, such as inequities in access to the Internet and digital skills, practices of design which exclude groups or individuals, and explorations of the concrete ways in which people can benefit from the application of digital skills and access across sectors (e.g., healthcare, education, civic participation) as well as ways in which people may be put at risk as a result of lack of knowledge, or skills in digital technologies.

See the 2017 Call for Proposals page for more information.

All proposals must be submitted electronically by Monday June 19 at 4:00pm EDT.