{"id":18401,"date":"2019-10-23T08:00:08","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T15:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=18401"},"modified":"2019-10-23T09:02:17","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T16:02:17","slug":"camosun-to-establish-open-education-initiative-with-grant-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2019\/10\/23\/camosun-to-establish-open-education-initiative-with-grant-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun to establish open education initiative with grant money"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camosun College recently received $32,250 from BCcampus in order to establish the Open Education Demonstration Initiative.<\/p>\n

The college received the money in the form of an Institutional Sustainability Grant from BCcampus\u2014a publicly funded organization that aims to make post-secondary education accessible to everyone\u2014and will use it to redevelop 10 courses with open textbooks through a committee of up to 10 faculty members, librarians, curriculum developers, and other specialists.<\/p>\n

Camosun College director of learning services Sybil Harrison is very enthusiastic about the grant.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ve got the funding for 18 months, so it will take us a little while to get all the work done,\u201d says Harrison. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about developing specific resources, but how we as an institution can increase the use and adoption of open educational resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Students have to pay for fewer expensive textbooks with open textbook initiatives (photo by Eli De la Cruz\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Harrison believes that the development of open learning will be just as helpful for faculty as it will be for students.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s more comprehensive than just thinking about how to support faculty with developing their favourite textbook or course pack,\u201d says Harrison. \u201cSome of them might be developing new material; some of them might need support in adopting materials that have already been developed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) external executive Fillette Umulisa says that the CCSS is pleased about Camosun moving forward on open educational resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all know that the cost of textbooks is a huge financial barrier to many of the students,\u201d says Umulisa. \u201cI think it\u2019s going to save students a lot of money, and it\u2019s going to make it easy for students to access textbooks without having to line up at the bookstore. It\u2019s also going to make it more flexible for faculty to customize their learning outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harrison is pleased with how open-textbook learning will support students with educational challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can thread some of the important educational initiatives into the work that we\u2019re doing,\u201d says Harrison. \u201cAccessibility is really important to us. So, some students might have visual difficulties, some students might have a learning disability, so… we can use open educational resources to really make the content accessible to everybody, regardless of where you\u2019re coming from or what your abilities may be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harrison says that she wants to make sure that the college\u2019s core values are always taken into account.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking sure that the materials reflect our institutional values around Indigenization, around inclusion… That\u2019s the really amazing thing around open educational resources\u2014you can adopt materials that someone else has created and then put your own spin on it,\u201d she says. \u201cMake it applicable for this context, this place, this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Umulisa says that the availability of open textbooks will create new options for students.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like a lot more students will have access to educational material, much more than they currently do, because sometimes the bookstore runs out of textbooks, or sometimes we just can\u2019t purchase because they\u2019re really expensive,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Umulisa believes that this is all a step in the right direction for the college.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Camosun College Student Society is really pleased with this initiative,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re going to continue to work with the college, to see that the $32,500 does make a positive change for the college\u2014and for our students.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun College recently received $32,250 from BCcampus in order to establish the Open Education Demonstration Initiative. The college received the money in the form of an Institutional Sustainability Grant from BCcampus\u2014a publicly funded organization that aims to make post-secondary education accessible to everyone\u2014and will use it to redevelop 10 courses with open textbooks through a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-october-23-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18403,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18401\/revisions\/18403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}