Webinar: Open educational resources (OER)

It's Open Education Week! 

We invite you to join members of the Open Access Working Group for a webinar on Open Educational Resources (OER) provided by the Ontario Council of University of Libraries (OCUL).

This showing is open to all students, faculty and staff interested in hearing more about the OER movement. The rise of the open education movement in Ontario is creating new opportunities as educators and trainers exploit open educational resources (OER), ranging from simple digital teaching assets to full courses, and related practices to secure the effective utilization of these resources.

Among these opportunities are:

• greater autonomy brought by the ability to select from more diverse resources
• fostering a culture of critiquing, and thereby improving, pedagogical practice
• increasing overall engagement with educational materials by both learners and educators

In Canada, an increasing number of student groups have been promoting the cost-saving value of open access textbooks as part of #TextbookBroke campaigns that draw attention to the impact of high-priced textbooks. Inspired by the B.C. Open Textbook Project, the Canadian social media campaign was started by students at the University of Victoria. In Ontario, the Brock University Student Union has been active in the advocacy for OER on campus and the Western University Student Council has developed a Standing Policy on OER.

This webinar will offer a number of perspectives on this emerging movement capturing voices of teaching faculty, students and instructional developers. Offered as a collaborative session with support from Ontario Council of University Libraries as well as eCampus Ontario funded project "Open Textbook Toolkit", this 1.5 hr webinar will explore a number of practical issues around this movement in Ontario.

Guest speakers include:

• Jessica O’Reilly, Instructional Developer (Faculty), Cambrian College
• Helen DeWaard, Sessional Instructor, Lakehead University
• Dr. Aaron Langille, Permanent Sessional, Laurentian University
• Landon Tulk, Student, University of Windsor

Registration is not required.