This week, we hear from Christina Hendricks, Professor of Teaching in Philosophy and Academic Director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology at UBC Vancouver.
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What motivated you do adopt/adapt/create open educational resources in your work?Concern about the cost to students of educational resources has been a significant motivator for me since I started adopting OER. I also value the ability to revise resources to better fit the context of my own courses (e.g., creating customized excerpts of longer texts or adding new things to a map or image). Finally, inviting students to create work that is shared publicly and openly can help them recognize that what they’re doing in their courses can have meaning and value beyond the courses, and that their contributions to the public sphere and the scholarly community can be incredibly valuable.
Can you tell us about the open education projects you have been working on?I have worked on the Open Case Studies project at UBC, alongside an undergraduate student who led the project with the purpose of creating & collecting openly-licensed case studies from UBC students, faculty or staff that can be used in teaching and learning. We held a two-day writing sprint during which faculty and students created a first set of case studies, and then some of those faculty later asked students in their courses to contribute to those case studies, or to create their own case studies for the collection (if students agreed to share them that way). The number of case studies on the site continues to grow. In addition, I am the series editor for a series of open textbooks for introduction to philosophy courses. This has been a long-term project that went from an original plan for one textbook to a series of nine textbooks, each with its own editor and focused on specific topics often covered in introductory-level philosophy courses, such as Logic, Social and Political Philosophy, Epistemology, Ethics, etc. This project is supported by The Rebus Community along with many volunteer editors and authors, and so far we have published two books: Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind and Introduction to Philosophy: Ethics. Two more should be published very soon!
What benefits have you seen from using open educational resources in the classroom?One benefit is knowing that cost won’t be a barrier to students accessing required resources; many surveys of students, including here at UBC, show that a significant number of students fairly often go without required course resources due to cost. Another is that if students are provided an opportunity to share their own work with others as OER, this can be motivating: recognizing that others may see and use what you’ve created can encourage deeper effort and learning.
What was the biggest challenge you faced and how did you overcome it?I teach large, intro-level philosophy courses, so thinking of ways to have students meaningfully contribute their work to a public forum and showcase it in a way that isn’t overwhelming due to volume can be challenging. I’ve worked to design WordPress course sites to fit this particular need, and am thinking in future I may ask students who do particularly good work to contribute to a book that is built up over several iterations of my courses.
Do you have any advice for other faculty developing OER?It can take a lot of time, depending on what you’re creating, so be realistic about timelines and expectations. Also, working with students on creating OER can be really helpful given their perspectives as potential audience for the resources, and seek grant funding to pay for their time (such as the UBC OER Fund Rapid Innovation Grants).
Is there anything else you’d like to add about OER at UBC?Awareness, use, and creation of OER at UBC have grown significantly over the last ten years or so. I’m deeply appreciative of the support the institution has shown for these efforts, particularly recently with the creation of the OER Fund. Throughout, student advocacy and awareness-raising has been key to the progress we’ve made, including through their contributions to an open working group at UBC that includes students, faculty, librarians, and staff at CTLT and other instructional support units. I was thrilled to see references to supporting open education in the UBC Strategic Plan, UBC’s Next Century, and am looking forward to continuing to work with many others at the institution to further expand adoption, adaption, and creation of OER.
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Thank you, Christina, for taking the time to participate!
