The Office of the Provost and Vice-President, Academic, at UBC Vancouver recently announced the recipients of the 2025 UBC Open Education Resources (OER) Excellence and Impact Awards. The OER Excellence and Impact Awards recognize outstanding work by faculty who materially advance the use and impact of open educational resources in credit courses at UBC. Recipients were selected based on their overall excellence in creating, revising or using OER in teaching and learning; the impact of their OER work on students, including addressing the affordability of educational materials; and their contribution to the greater open education community at UBC.
UBC Vancouver: Individual award
Dr. Lindsay Cuff, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Faculty of Land & Food Systems and Faculty of Forestry
Lindsay Cuff, an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Faculties of Forestry and Land & Food Systems, is a trailblazer in advancing open educational resources (OER) to break down economic barriers and enhance accessibility in education.
In 2022, she created Writing Place: A Scholarly Writing Textbook—a free, online, dynamic textbook used in LFS 150 and NRES 150. This innovative open resource provides carefully scaffolded and interactive discipline-specific content relevant to the disciplines of Land & Food Systems and Forestry, as well as the communities these disciplines have partnerships with. In total, it contains 13 chapters, with Student Learning Goals, Questions for Reflection, and Key Take Away sections for each chapter; 97 illustrations; 29 HP5 interactive activities, and 10 Student Narratives.
This resource supports students in meaningfully contributing to scholarly conversations in their disciplines, as well as empowering them to consider how these skills might be used to effectively communicate with communities beyond the university. Writing Place enhances accessibility through Universal Design for Learning principles, and integrates an inclusive, decolonial approach to scholarly writing. The resource reflects Professor Cuff’s teaching philosophy, which values storytelling as a transformative tool to connect students, instructors, and the places they inhabit. Over 900 students in LFS 150 and NRES have benefited from this resource.
UBC Vancouver: Group award
Kelly Allison, Assistant Professor of Teaching, School of Social Work, Faculty of Arts
Marie Nightbird, Associate Professor of Teaching, School of Social Work, Faculty of Arts
A Toolkit for Teaching Communication Skills in Social Work is an open educational resource that was developed to support student’s learning of basic interpersonal communication skills. In conjunction with UBC Studios, Drs. Allison and Nightbird designed and developed a package of five videos to demonstrate the core communication skills taught in all three sections of SOWK 310A. This involved writing scripts, hiring, and training actors, and supporting UBC Studios with the filming and editing of the videos. Grounded in the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, the videos included “signalling” and “segmenting” for ease of learning. The toolkit also includes transcripts of each video, and a teaching guide that outlines the pedagogical benefits of using demonstration videos, offers vignette summaries of each video and describes the micro skills that are taught in each video.
These videos have been beneficial to social work students at the UBC School of Social Work in learning core communication skills. This accessible resource supports a rich learning environment where students and instructors together explore the nuances of communication techniques and their application in various contexts. These videos allow students a better understanding of how these skills translate to real-world situations. With a focus on equity, diversity, and inclusion, the resource highlights representation of human diversity, and is guided by principles of universal design.
UBC Okanagan: Individual award
Dr. Ramon Lawrence, Computer Science, Faculty of Science
Dr. Ramon Lawrence, Professor of Computer Science at UBC Okanagan and a recipient of a 2020 Killam Teaching Prize, has been a passionate leader in Open Educational Resources (OER) since 2006. His OER materials have saved students over $500,000 in textbook costs, directly benefited more than 3,000 learners, and are adopted by instructors at UBC Okanagan.
He has integrated open educational resources in his courses since he joined UBC in 2006. His work exemplifies the principles and practices of accessibility, equity, diversity, and inclusion, and his efforts in developing and scaling OER have made significant contributions to student engagement and learning outcomes.
In addition to course content, his innovative open-source projects, such as the HelpMe AI support platform and PrairieLearn deployments, are improving student support and assessment, advancing accessible, engaging education at UBC and leading the integration of artificial intelligence in learning.
Dr. Lawrence’s tireless efforts to develop, refine and share OER have made significant contributions to student engagement and advanced the mission of accessible education. Through his innovative OER platforms and resources, mentorship, and collaborative spirit, he continues to strengthen the UBCO community.
UBC Okanagan: Group award
Dr. Claire Yan, Professor of Teaching, School of Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science
Dr. Casey Keulen, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Materials Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science
Dr. Amir M. Dehkhoda, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Materials Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science
Ali Doustahadi, Master’s Degree, Department of Materials Engineering
Hariharan (Hari) Umashankar, Graduate Research Assistant and PhD Candidate, Department of Materials Engineering
The Introduction to Engineering Thermodynamics open textbook and problem bank have transformed how foundational engineering concepts are taught, making high-quality, interactive content freely available. Through the development of accessible, innovative resources, the team has fostered a culture of inclusivity, empowered student engagement, and achieved substantial cost savings for learners.
Led by Dr. Claire Yan, Professor of Teaching, School of Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science, UBC Okanagan, the project team includes Dr. Casey Keulen, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Materials Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science; Dr. Amir M. Dehkhoda, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Materials Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science; and teaching assistants Hariharan Umashankar and Ali Doustahadi.
Designed with Universal Design for Learning principles and freely accessible worldwide, this resource features interactive H5P questions and programmable problem sets that foster inclusivity, engagement, and practical skill-building. Adopted by courses at UBC and Arizona State University, it supports over 750 students annually, saving them an estimated $32,500–$48,700 in textbook costs.
Through interdisciplinary collaboration, the team has earned accolades like UBC Okanagan’s “Books of the Year” (2022) and Dr. Yan’s BCcampus Award for Excellence in Open Education (2023). These openly licensed resources, shared via GitHub and open repositories like UBC cIRcle, OER Commons, and LibreTexts, continue to inspire and empower educators and learners globally.
This work exemplifies the power of OER in enhancing student learning and advancing educational innovation. The team is proud to advance equitable access and pedagogical innovation in engineering education at UBC and beyond.
