GMCTL to Launch New Open Course on Open in Early February

The University of Saskatchewan is a leader in Canada around open educational resources (e.g. textbooks) and is moving toward wider integration of open pedagogy (students as contributors, not just consumers of knowledge). As part of this, and in the spirit of open educational practices (OEP), on February 1, 2022 we are launching a new open course to assist instructors in learning about all aspects of OEP.

Open educational practices are a range of practices based on the idea that collaborating on the creation of and freely sharing knowledge, research, and learning materials benefits all of us.

Key aspects of OEP include:

• Materials are accessible
• Anyone can create, collaborate on, and share the materials
• There are choices for the creator of the materials as to what they will create and how they will share it
• Research data and publications available for everyone to access and use
• Reflections on teaching and learning so others may learn from our experiences

If you’re an instructor or graduate student at USask, you can register for the course through the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning (GMCTL) registration system.

If you’re an instructor elsewhere, a K-12 educator, pre-service teacher, or just want to learn more about OEP, you can also take the course and complete the assignments, but without the biweekly virtual meetings.

By no later than February 1, 2022, the course can be found at this link – https://canvas.usask.ca/courses/40758. If you want to be notified when the course is live, please complete this form.

There will be a form in the course for you to submit some relevant information including the address for the blog you will use throughout the course.

This course will take participants through the elements of OEP including open licensing, finding and evaluating existing open materials, adapting existing or creating new materials, integrating open pedagogy, and sharing your open teaching practices with others. Course materials will be available through Canvas (and openly licensed), but participants will be creating blogs to share their work.

By the end of this course, participants should be able to:

• Apply a Creative Commons license to their own work
• Find at least one open educational resource (OER) appropriate for use in their teaching
• Adapt or create a new OER
• Create a plan for an open pedagogy activity
• Justify instruction decisions based on their own personal open philosophy.

If you have any questions about the course, please contact Heather M. Ross at heather.ross@usask.ca.