Campus Entities Most Active in Efforts Advancing OER:

• Library
• Student Government
• Teaching and Learning Center

Library Departments Active in Efforts Advancing OER:

• Scholarly Communication
• Teaching & Learning

Academic Subjects With Greatest OER Traction:

• Biological and related sciences
• Business and administration
• Education
• Generic programs and qualifications
• Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)
• Mathematics and statistics
• Social and behavioral sciences

OER Staff Location:

• Library
• Teaching and Learning Center

Recognizing textbook costs as a barrier to accessing a post-secondary education, the Simon Fraser Student Society's Advocacy Committee advocated for greater use of open textbooks. They did this by running a simple petition whose student signatories stated that they were interested in free textbooks and called on SFU Administration to look into them. At the time, the BC Open Textbook Program had been in existence for two years and none of the research institutions in the province including SFU had adopted a material from the collection. The petition which collected over 2000 signatures in its first month was presented to the SFU President, Vice-President Academic and Provost, and SFU Senate.

Program Type:

• Campaign

Duration: 09/2014 - 12/2014

Scope: OER (open course content)

Primary OER Strategy: OER Awareness

Secondary OER Strategies: OER Adoption

Unit Housing the Program:

Student Government

Source of Program Funding:

• Student Fees

Total Program Funding to Date: $ 3,000

Incentives Offered by the Program:

• Not applicable

Links:
Other Resource

This campaign entitled #textbookbrokeBC aimed to raise awareness and expand support for Open Educational Resources (OER) on campus. The campaign was aimed at educating the community on what OER were and where they could be found. The student society tabled outside of the campus bookstore during the first two weeks of classes in the fall/spring semesters displaying physical and digital open textbooks from the BCcampus collection, and also handed out bookmarks with information about OER.

To raise visibility, the student society encouraged students to tweet the amount of money spent on textbooks using #textbookbrokeBC and also ran a photo campaign where students were asked to be photographed displaying the amount of money spent at the bookstore on a whiteboard. The individual whose photo received the most traction (likes/shares) had their textbook costs paid for by the student society.

The student society also engaged faculty members to look at and review the existing resources in the BC Open Textbook collection by visiting them during their office hours. The campaign was done in conjunction with the UBC AMS and inspired other Canadian institutions to launch similar campaigns.

Program Type:

• Campaign

Duration: 09/2015 - 04/2016

Program Webpage: http://sfss.ca/OER

Scope: OER (open course content)

Primary OER Strategy: OER Awareness

Secondary OER Strategies: OER Adaptation, OER Adoption

Unit Housing the Program:

Student Government

Source of Program Funding:

• Student Government Fund

Total Program Funding to Date: $ 2,500

Links:
Other Resource

The Open Educational Resources (OER) Grants provided funding and staff support to SFU faculty members who wished to integrate open educational resources into their courses. This program ran from 2016-2019.

The grants were established with funding from the Office of the Vice-President, Academic, and Provost and were administered jointly by the SFU Library and Centre for Educational Excellence (formerly the Teaching and Learning Centre. Faculty members were eligible to receive up to $5,000 to help them redesign a course to use OER as their primary course material, and to help them adopt and/or adapt open textbooks and other OER for that purpose.

In addition to the funding provided by these grants, staff from the SFU Library and the CEE were available to assist recipients in locating, evaluating and adapting high-quality open resources as an alternative to commercial course materials.

Program Type:

• Grant Program

Duration: 01/2016 - 12/2019

Program Webpage: https://www.sfu.ca/oergrants.html

Scope: OER (open course content)

Primary OER Strategy: OER Adoption

Secondary OER Strategies: OER Adaptation, OER Awareness, OER Curation, OER Pedagogy, OER Review/Assessment, OER Research

Unit Housing the Program:

Teaching and Learning Center

Program Partners:

• Library
• Student Government
• Teaching and Learning Center

Source of Program Funding:

• Library’s general operating budget
• President, Chancellor, or Provost’s budget
• Other: Teaching & Learning Centre's general budget

Total Program Funding to Date: $ 175,000

Total Student Savings to Date: $ 1,200,000

Incentives Offered by the Program:

• Financial incentives (grants, stipends)
• Instructional design assistance
• Technical assistance

Conditions: Recipients are required to openly license and freely share resources created or adapted

Total amount of incentive grants awarded to date: $ 175,000

Total number of incentive grants awarded to date: 35

Typical amount of each grant: $ 5,000

The SFU OER working group aims to develop awareness and build capacity for adoptions of open textbooks and other OER at SFU by sharing information and coordinating efforts among key campus stakeholders who lead and support open education initiatives on campus. This group represents a community of practice rather than a more formal committtee or task group.

Duration: 01/2018 - Present

Program Webpage: https://www.sfu.ca/oer.html

Scope: OER (open course content)

Primary OER Strategy: OER Awareness

Secondary OER Strategies: OER Adaptation, OER Adoption, OER Curation, OER Pedagogy, OER Publication, OER Review/Assessment, OER Research

Unit Housing the Program:

Library

Program Partners:

• Campus Store
• Library
• Student Government
• Teaching and Learning Center

Source of Program Funding:

• Not Applicable

Incentives Offered by the Program:

• Not applicable

In celebration of Open Education Week 2017, Simon Fraser University is honoured to be collaborating with the University of British Columbia, BCcampus, Public Knowledge Project, and British Columbia Research Libraries Group to host a discussion on The Failure of Access: Rethinking Open Education.

The use of open re-use licenses and Internet technologies have long promised to reduce barriers to education by making it more distributed, equitable, and open. Indeed, the promise of open education can trace its roots to the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations 1948, which states “everyone has a right to education.” There is little formal evidence, however, that open education has an impact on increasing access to learning or making education more equitable.

This event will explore the goals, failures, and successes of open education. Join us in exploring such questions as: is open education succeeding in being a transformative movement that makes learning more accessible? What are the criteria and successes that should be used to measure if the open education movement is a success? What more needs to be done?

Our discussion will be led by keynote speaker Dr. Ishan Abeywardena (Advisor - Open Education Resources) from the Commonwealth of Learning and panelists from SFU, UBC, CAPER-BC, and SPARC.

Date: March 28, 2017

Event Type:

• Talk/Presentation

Event themes:

• Other

Scope: OER (open course content)

Approximate Attendees: 50

Links:
Event Summary

Go To Resource

Library guide to understanding, finding and using OER