Unlocking Knowledge: More Open Education Resources in Updated Guide
Open Education Resources (OER) promote equitable access to education and redefine teaching and learning by providing free, accessible, customizable, high-quality educational content.
One of the biggest barriers to faculty adopting and using Open Educational Resources (OER) in their courses is finding what is available and suitable for their teaching context. The updated OER by Discipline Guide, developed as part of a collaboration between the MacPherson Institute and the McMaster University Library, seeks to address that barrier by including an abundance of open textbooks and other OER organized by undergraduate programs at McMaster University.
These academic programs span the Faculties of Science, Social Science, Humanities, Engineering, Business and, newly added, Health Sciences.
The guide features OER carefully selected from various sources, such as the Ontario Open Library and other open textbook collections, including OER Commons and Open Textbook Library.
The guide also highlights OER that have been created by McMaster faculty, instructors and staff members. These projects were largely enabled via funding through McMaster’s OER Grant and eCampusOntario’s Virtual Learning Strategy.
“We recognize that our instructors are keen to explore more affordable course materials for their students but are challenged with finding suitable open options,” said Joanne Kehoe, lead educational developer at the MacPherson Institute and McMaster OER Committee co-chair. “We hope that this resource will kickstart the possibilities that OER offer—not only around affordability, but also providing the opportunity to adopt an OER and customize it to suit teaching and learning goals.”
Zhen He, assistant professor, Economics and former OER grant recipient, agrees. “I was able to adapt an existing open educational resource by creating a question bank in collaboration with my students. This presented a wonderful opportunity to practice open pedagogical practice and create openly-licenses materials specifically targeted to my course.”
Over this past year, He has acted as an eCampusOntario OER Ranger. The OER Ranger program selects representatives from each of Ontario’s publicly-assisted college, university, or Indigenous Institutes to champion the use of OER in their institutions. Shelir Ebrahimi, an assistant professor in Chemical Engineering at McMaster, was also selected for the Ranger program.
“Creating an OER for my course as well as incorporating open pedagogical practices has transformed my teaching for the better, and at the same time has supported the learning experience of students greatly,” said Shelir. “I hope that instructors engage with this updated guide as a way of enhancing the student experience by uniquely aligning materials to their course, while at the same time making it more affordable and accessible.”
Most of these OER are peer-reviewed, and many have been adopted and used in classrooms worldwide, indicating their quality and relevance to contemporary educational needs. Instructors have the flexibility to customize the materials to suit their teaching and learning context, whether by using the entire textbook or selecting specific chapters for supplementary course material.
Read more about OER at McMaster University at the Library Research Guide. If you have any questions about using OER in your teaching and learning, please reach out to: oer@mcmaster.ca.
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