Open
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What Are Open Educational Practices in Our Context?
We have seen significant growth in the use of open educational resources at the U of S in the past six years. As of this fall, more than a dozen open textbooks have been created or adapted at by instructors and students have saved well over $2 million dollars. “Open”, however, is about more than just textbooks and money saved, it’s about a way of thinking about teaching and learning. This is the first in a serious of posts looking at the integration of open educational practices (OEP) already occurring at the U of S, as well as about the potential for integrating OEP into courses and programs across the…
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The Benefits of Using OER For Remote Teaching
Open Educational Resources (OER) have experienced a growing popularity at the U of S during the past six years, with more than 6,500 students using open textbooks and other OER instead of commercial textbooks. They’re free to use, easy to access, and allow for adaptation to improve student engagement and learning, as well as instructor academic freedom (no commercial publisher telling you what you should teach). With the move of all U of S courses to being offered remotely for at least the spring and summer terms, the use of OER makes a lot of sense, especially with the Bookstore being closed. OER materials are easily accessible for instructors and…
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Online Presentations and Poster Sessions Within Canadian Copyright Guidelines
We’ve had several instructors approach us about how to move their poster sessions and student presentations to a remote (online) environment. After extensive conversations with the Copyright Coordinator, Undergraduate Research Initiative Coordinator, and our Distance Education Unit, we felt it was a good idea to develop some support resources around this topic. An earlier post addressed choosing appropriate technology, while this one will provide guidance on staying within appropriate copyright parameters. If the work does not contain any copyrighted materials then you have the option of having the students share their posters openly. Give them the option of what license they wish to put on their own work. This could…
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Online Homework Systems: How to Protect Student Privacy and Keep Materials Costs Down
Online homework systems (OHS) are online tools that can grade questions asked to students as homework, track formative practice, or assess examinations. Students can receive immediate feedback on the activities they complete using an OHS, providing students with a clear picture of how they are progressing and where they may need to do some additional work. OHS are used extensively through the STEM disciplines, but are also used in other fields including Psychology and business. While they have benefits for both instructors and students, there are concerns that both should be aware of. Concerns The Cost of OHS for Students In about half of the courses using OHS purchased through…
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First-time Thoughts on a Student Blog Assignment
[social-bio] By Yin Liu, Associate Professor, Department of English Why I did it In 2016-2017 I taught, for the first time, a full-year (6 credit unit) English course, “History and Future of the Book,” which is one of our Foundations courses – that is, it is one of a few 200-level courses required for our majors. As in all our courses, there is a substantial writing component, usually in the form of essay assignments. I decided to complicate my life further by trying out a type of student assignment also new to me: a student-written course blog. I had been thinking about using a student blog assignment ever since I heard…
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What’s a Z-Course and How Do I Do That?
[social_share/] [social-bio] As costs for commercial textbooks continue to rise, there has been growing interest at the U of S in open educational resources (OER). OER is not only free to students, but adaptable to make the learning materials appropriate for a particular course. But OER is not the only way to reduce costs and move away from commercial textbooks. Z-courses, as defined at the U of S, are courses where students have zero or minimal ($35 of less) direct costs for learning materials. This can be achieved through the use of an open textbook or other OER, resources from the Library, instructor notes, or other such materials in place…
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An Opportunity to Request Open Textbooks You Need
[social_share/] [social-bio] Many of the open textbooks being used at the U of S were found through the BCcampus open textbook repository. If you are interested in switching to an open textbook, but haven’t been able to find one for your course, this call for suggestions from BCcampus may be of interest to you: In an ongoing effort to sustain and build the BC Open Textbook Collection, BCcampus asks for your help to identify subject areas within this collection that are missing open textbooks either entirely or in specific categories and/or course levels. As an overview, there are currently 180 textbooks in this collection covering eight main subject areas (Sciences,…
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Wikipedia’s Ways of Knowing – Part 1
By John Kleefeld [social-bio] In my previous post, I characterized the subject categories in the Requested articles page as idiosyncratic and mused that they might be better based on the Library of Congress Classification system. As it happens, Wikipedia does map some of its articles (pages) into the LCC system, and also provides several other methods of organizing knowledge. Some of these are well known, some less so. I want to discuss them because I think that instructors and students alike should be familiar with ways of finding knowledge beyond today’s default method of keyword searching. First, though, I want to talk about two approaches to knowing or learning, which…
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Interested in Funding for your Teaching Innovation? Check out the “Innovative Teaching Showcase”
[social_share/] [social-bio] Sometimes, that example from a peer is just what is needed to help us move from thinking about it to doing it! As part of GMCTL Celebration Week, check out a wide range of teaching and learning projects undertaken with assistance of funds administered through the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning since 2012. Four showcases, each organized around a theme and set up as a series of faculty panel presentations, are offered: Teaching approaches and open pedagogy, Wednesday, April 26 9:00 – 12:00 Indigenization, Wednesday, April 26, 1:00 – 4:00 Program and course design, Thursday, April 27 1:00 – 4:00 Experiential learning and undergraduate research, Friday,…
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Creating Articles With Wikipedia’s ‘Requested Articles’ Feature
By John Kleefeld [social-bio] In my previous two posts, I discussed how instructors and students can use WikiProjects to select articles for editing in Wikipedia-based course assignments. In this post, I discuss the creation of new articles, using WikiProject Requested articles (WP:WPRA) as a starting point. This is not the only way to start creating new articles, but the process allows you to see whether the article you are thinking of writing, or one like it, has already been requested, and to see how that request fits in with the larger subject of which it is a part. What is “WikiProject Requested articles”? The WPRA page explains that WikiProject Requested…