The University of Winnipeg Library is celebrating Open Education Week from Monday, March 6 to Friday, March 10 to raise awareness and highlight innovations in open education.
Open Educational Resources (OERs) are free, accessible, and reusable educational tools that provide increased equity and access to education. This also encourages increased innovation by allowing people at educational institutions all over the world the ability to collaborate. It also helps students save money.
UWinnipeg focuses mainly on OERs, which include, but are not limited to, open textbooks.
Open textbooks are really exciting – because they are openly licensed, they can be adopted and adapted freely.
Brianne Selman
“Open textbooks are really exciting – because they are openly licensed, they can be adopted and adapted freely, as well as reduce barriers for students for whom cost may be an issue,” said Brianne Selman, Scholarly Communications and Copyright Librarian. “But OERs can be much more than just textbooks – putting an open license on a syllabus, or a course module, or a PowerPoint can make an OER.”
An example of OER in practice is when UWinnipeg chemist Devin Latimer published an online textbook in 2020 that’s free and accessible to anyone anywhere in the world. Due to the open licensing, Latimer’s textbook can be amended and adapted to suit a different field of study without having to recreate the wheel.
“I love the idea of a community of educators and authors that openly share their ideas and material for others to use and remix any way they want – all to produce quality resources that are available to anyone in the world for free.” said Latimer.
Selman is presenting a free Zoom webinar, Adopt, Don’t Shop!, which is an introduction to finding and using OERs on Monday, March 6 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.
In the workshop, Selman will help navigate the world of OERs, including how to find, use, and create OERs – including how to put an open license on scholarly materials that can be reused, and how to share them so they are discoverable for others to use. To register RSVP to Brianne Selman.
