For three action-packed days in October, Norquest College in Edmonton cohosted OE Global 2023, an annual event that brings Open Education practitioners, policy builders, advocates, researchers, students, and decision-makers together to network, discuss, review, and immerse themselves in all things open.

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, recently created an open textbook, College Success for Newcomers, a guide to support newcomers to Canada entering college institutions in Manitoba. “Creating an open educational resource is a huge undertaking and responsibility,” explained Carley McDougall, acting executive director at Campus Manitoba. “We felt that sharing their learnings and presenting at OE Global was the next logical step for these creators, so we were happy to support them with a grant to help them bring their experience to the rest of the world.”

Creating Awareness for OER

Through a grant from Campus Manitoba, Rebecca and Emilie created an open textbook using Pressbooks, a platform designed to create, adapt, and share books online, with powerful accessibility and interactivity features baked in. Once the book was completed, the next step was to create awareness of it throughout the provinces so faculty, staff, and students could benefit from it. “We promoted the guide here at RRC Polytech via Red Forum: an internal one-day conference in June for all staff,” explained Rebecca. “But we wanted to promote it externally as well, so once it was published, we started looking for OER conferences with the goal of presenting our open textbook. We felt it would be helpful to share our step-by-step approach to adapting an OER resource, and we were accepted at OE Global. The reviewers of our proposal were very supportive, explaining that while it’s a bit of a beginner topic, it was appealing because they always have beginners at the conference. So we did a walkthrough about OER and relevant topics, and we shared a QR code with the link to our OER so everyone who attended our session could access it on their devices. It was well received, and a few people commented that our presentation was one of the best ones of the day for them. As well, a few other attendees let us know that they’d already been using our OER in their institutions. We created an OER that was Manitoba-focused, but we also wanted it to appeal to people in other places, so it was exciting to hear we managed that.”

Finding New Perspectives

One of the unsung benefits of going to a global conference is the wide variety of mindsets sitting next to you. “It was interesting to see the different perspectives that the attendees brought to the conference,” said Emilie. “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.”

Rebecca shared, “One of the major themes that came up was actually a bit critical of open educational resources, which was quite interesting. Apparently, there’s a saying, ‘OERs are free to use, but not free to make.’ The issue is that, in many cases, instructors or professors are making OER off the side of their desks. They’re taking on this extra task with a significant workload, which they may or may not have time to do. Going forward, there needs to be intentional thought about providing prioritized time for people to create these resources, such as giving an instructor a course release so they have the time to work on this kind of project.”

Exploring the Nuances of OER

Since the early 1970s, awareness, adoption, and adaptation of OERs have occurred through the help of librarians, catalogers, and volunteers who produce reliable and relevant resources, including more contemporary and specialized OERs. As the potential of OER develops, so does the need to look at how we are creating them and who should be creating them.

“In her keynote address, Kayla Lar-Son, Indigenous Programs and Services Librarian at the University of British Columbia, spoke about Indigenous OER,” said Emilie. “She asked if that meant OER written by Indigenous people, or was it OER that includes Indigenous content? She was very direct about challenging the authors in the room about how they are including Indigenous content in their OERs, regardless of their motivation, asking them, ‘What are you doing, and how are you doing it? To what extent are you collaborating and compensating indigenous collaborators?’ It was a challenging and humbling experience, and I was excited about the learning opportunity because I would like to use it to learn from others to improve our OER as an inclusive and equitable resource.”

Building on Success

“Due to the intellectual property rights policies at our institution when we created College Success for Newcomers, we could only adapt information, not create it,” explained Rebecca. “We had to use information that was already open. We did that, and we were very careful about it, but the next OER we’re targeting is focused on generative artificial intelligence. We are developing a Faculty Guide, and since there isn’t sufficient open information about it yet, we’ll need to create our own. I applied for a STAR grant, which is a fund within our institution for new work. I wrote a persuasive application to communicate the need to create —not adapt— an OER. After meeting with our legal department and copyright officer, I was successful and received the grant. I also applied and was awarded a Campus Manitoba grant, and Campus Manitoba offered to cover the costs to have the GenAI OER project lead, Troy Heaps, and others on the GenAI OER project team attend the , a support program for people working on OER. The money from the STAR grant is being used, in part, to fund a course release for the project lead, giving him the time to create this OER, conduct focus groups, and research the topic thoroughly.”

“It’s exciting to see the passion and focus on OER for students in Manitoba and the rest of the world,” shared Carley. “We are looking forward to contributing to the global open effort and continuously improving through inspiration, iteration, and conversation. OER is already a great concept, and together, we can continue to make it more productive, more effective, and more accessible for all.”

#OEGlobal24

At the end of the event in Edmonton, Dr. Adrian Stagg shared the news about the next iteration of OE Global, planned for November 13 – 15, 2024, in Brisbane, Australia. Watch the video to learn more.

Photos via DawnDena Gordon.