It’s been another fantastic year for post-secondary education in Manitoba, and we’re proud to share some of the highlights that we experienced during the past fiscal year. We’ve seen our team grow, we’ve continued to facilitate online courses, and we’ve made great leaps in the development and celebration of open educational resources for faculty, staff, and students throughout the province.

Campus Manitoba’s success has been due to the tight-knit core team. We are agile and nimble, and each member of the team wears many hats to do what we do every day. Over the past year, Carley McDougall has been the acting executive director. We are thrilled to announce that she recently shed the ‘acting’ part of her title and is now fully in charge of our team, guiding us to effectively support our partners in our province’s post-secondary education system.
In addition to Carley’s new title, we are thrilled to have added Kristy Lacroix to the team, taking the role of special projects coordinator as of last August.
DawnDena Gordon, our Virtual Help Desk navigator, and Kathy Keating, assistant to the executive director, continue to deliver above and beyond every day.
We are excited about our growth over the past year and look forward to the possibilities we can bring to Manitoba’s post-secondary system in the years to come.

Accomplishments

For the past fiscal year, we’ve seen tremendous growth in student savings (an increase of over $700,000 over the previous year), as well as continued interest and uptake in the programs we offer or facilitate to support open education in the province.

Here are the highlights:

OER by the Numbers

• $4,132,035.03 in student savings (up from $3,409,510 last year)
• 23,657 students benefitting
• 130 adoptions
• 11 made-in-Manitoba adaptations, with six more in production.

OpenEd Manitoba

• To date, OpenEd Manitoba actively hosts 361 open textbooks (with significantly more in the catalog
• New resource available: an accessible and formatted template for Pressbooks textbooks.
• Working on licensing DOIs for our Manitoba textbooks

Manitoba Flexible Learning Hub

An additional two EDI modules have been completed, and Ariful Hoq Shanil, the instructional designer for the HUB, is providing accessibility and alignment reviews  for two of the Rebus projects:

• Troy Heaps, Generative Artificial Intelligence: Practical Uses in Education
• Introductory Chemistry, coming Fall 2024

Set Your Course Manitoba

• 441 total careers

Campus Manitoba Virtual Help Desk

• During the 2023-2024 academic year, the VHD supported 26 student chats and 410 new accounts (which include chats and email responses)

A Year to Remember

Manitoba is rich with talented, driven professionals who want to work with us to improve access to education for students near and far. Each month, we strive to share their stories and the work they’re doing to enhance educational accessibility and promote lifelong learning in the province.

Check out these stories and to be notified as they’re published.

Building Academic and Real-world Integrity in Manitoba

Last summer, the Canadian Symposium on Academic Integrity 2023 was hosted at the University of Manitoba. Campus Manitoba was one of the event sponsors. Nearly 130 participants came together over two days to discuss concerns, challenges, concepts, and creative solutions to promote honesty, trust, responsibility, fairness, respect, and courage in the post-secondary environment.

“I’m not suggesting that you can eliminate misconduct, but if you put those resources in earlier and start to predict some of these times where there’ll be issues, by the end, you should need less energy to deal with fewer cases.” – Lisa Vogt, communications instructor, Red River College Polytechnic

À propos of open pedagogy: a rendezvous with French or bilingual open educational resources for Manitoba

In October, we shared a report authored by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL). The report recommended strategies to advance the adoption and support of OER throughout the country. In addition to the report, we caught up with Lise Brin, head librarian at Université de Saint-Boniface (USB) in Winnipeg, to learn about her experience and learnings attending the Francophone OER Summit, cohosted by the University of Ottawa Library and CARL.

In addition to the English version of the article, we created a translated version for the French audience.

“If you look at what’s out there in Canada — or worldwide — for OER — there’s very little French content. Quebec has an interesting digital strategy at the provincial level, so there’s an expectation that they will be creating new content, but it hasn’t quite materialized yet. Until then, most of what we’re likely to do will be translation, but in any given context, you don’t just want to do a straight translation. You want to make sure you’re adapting it to your local needs. As well, there are certain language elements that can’t come across through a direct translation.” ­– Lise Brin, head librarian at Université de Saint-Boniface (USB) in Winnipeg

Representing Manitoba on the Open Education Global Stage

In October, we had the opportunity to send two open education practitioners to OE Global 2023, a three-day event cohosted by Norquest College in Edmonton. Rebecca Molly Hiebert, acting associate dean of Education, Global Access and Academic Advancement at Red River Polytechnic and Emilie Jackson, academic support specialist at Red River Polytechnic, attended through a grant from Campus Manitoba and were able to share their newly created open textbook, College Success for Newcomers, with the rest of the world.

“It was interesting to see the different perspectives that the attendees brought to the conference. There were people beside me who were invested in a completely different aspect of a session than I was, and I found it fascinating to hear their questions during the q-and-a periods. The conversations and engagement around some of these sessions introduced perspectives I would never have considered. This was an opportunity to understand what our OER represented and its place within this larger conversation around open education.” – Emilie Jackson, academic support specialist at Red River Polytechnic

Taking the Fear Out of Copyright Compliance in Manitoba

Toward the end of the calendar year, we announced the publication of a new open educational resource, Copyright Toolkit for Manitoba Post-Secondary Institutions, to augment a video resource — Copyright Open Educational Resource for University Instructors and Staff — developed by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries. These innovative tools provide educators throughout the province with the information needed to be proactive regarding copyright materials used in their courses and institutions.

“Anyone involved in copyright will appreciate that we actively avoided saying ‘It depends’ because that phrase is pervasive in all copyright training. We wanted this to be an accessible resource for the average person to use to make an informed decision regarding copyright.” – Josh Seeland, Manager, Library Services, Assiniboine Community College

CDLRA 2023: Canadian Educators Seeking Improved Access to Technology for Teaching and Learning

We started the new year by sharing the 2023 edition of the Pan-Canadian Report on Digital Learning Trends in Canadian Post-Secondary Education, developed by the Canadian Digital Learning Research Association (CDLRA). The report identified opportunities to improve access to professional development, an area in which the Manitoba Flexible Learning Hub is delivering high-value resources and support for local educators.

“The resources are there so sessional instructors don’t have to pay for their own courses and find that PD on their own.” – Jonathan Kennedy, manager of the Manitoba Flexible Learning Hub (MB Hub)

Black History Month in Manitoba

In February, we joined Manitoba to honour and celebrate the role of Black experiences in Canada. Across Manitoba, post-secondary institutions shared the many successes and contributions made by the Black community throughout Canada. Whether the medium is books, articles, videos, or presentations, a variety of resources are available for individuals to learn more about Black history in Canada and North America. In addition to sharing resources to learn more about Black history in Manitoba, we provided information as to how our readers can be antiracist.

“The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it – and then dismantle it.” – Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist

Building Capacity for Open in Manitoba with the Rebus Foundation Textbook Success Program

To wrap up the fiscal year in March, we published an article about the work we’ve been doing with the Rebus Foundation, an organization advocating and championing new publishing models and technologies. Campus Manitoba sponsored a cohort of faculty members, program leads, and open textbook creators to guide them over the course of one year to collaboratively develop or enhance open textbooks with a Manitobian perspective.

“The Rebus collaboration is helping us build capacity in Manitoba. The more we can empower educators to understand and leverage the benefits of open education, the more they can share it with their cohorts and colleagues.” – Carley McDougall, executive director, Campus Manitoba

Writing Guidelines for Campus Manitoba

To develop a consistent voice to inform future writers of Campus Manitoba communications, articles, and social media messaging, we developed a writing guide to help establish the Campus Manitoba voice, and a capitalization and spelling guide to clarify preferred spellings of words, names, and places unique to the province and the people who live here. The guide is intended to be a living document, updated regularly as the brand voice matures.

Reflecting our commitment to open, the guides are informed by similar resources created by local and national organizations.

Check out the Campus Manitoba writing guide and the caps and spelling guide.