The Office of the Provost and Vice-President, Academic, UBC Vancouver is pleased to invite the UBC community to apply for the UBC Vancouver Open Educational Resources (OER) Fund Rapid Innovation and Implementation Grants.
The OER Fund consists of two grant pathways:
- OER Implementation Grants: Grants of up to $25,000 for UBCV faculty who wish to incorporate open educational resources as the primary materials into their UBCV credit courses. The application deadline for this grant is 3pm PM Friday, November 25th.
- OER Rapid Innovation Grants: Grants of up to $2,000, which are available to the UBCV community for innovative activities that increase open educational resource development, awareness and capacity building. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis until the year’s funds are exhausted.
Thinking of applying for an OER Fund Grant? Learn more about the grants process during the OER information session on Wednesday, October 13.
The UBCV OER Fund, established through the UBC Academic Excellence Fund in 2019, aims to support affordable and inclusive access to learning materials through the adoption, adaptation, development, and integration of open educational resources in UBCV credit courses. At launch, UBCV committed $1-million over a four-year period to support OER initiatives. In the first two years of the program, the OER Fund provided funding to over 45 faculty, staff, and student OER projects.
For more information and to apply, visit: https://oerfund.open.ubc.ca/.
About Open Education Resources
Open educational resources are defined as “teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use. Generally, this permission is granted by the use of an open license (for example, a Creative Commons license), which allows anyone to freely use, adapt and share the resource — anytime, anywhere.” Open educational resources “include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge” (Hewlett Foundation).
The use of OER is a great strategy for providing access to course materials, as:
- Instructors can modify the OERs to suit student needs, teaching methods, curriculum, and learning goals.
- There is no need to gain permission — or pay — to use, copy, or distribute an OER.
- OERs are easy to circulate among an unlimited number of students.
- Online versions of open resources are free to students and instructors and thus lower financial barriers for course materials.
- Open resources have no expiration dates and require no access codes.
To read more about open education resources and their use at UBC, please visit the Open UBC website.
