• OER - Publishers

    For-profit, faux-pen, and critical conversations about the future of learning materials

    October 15, 2019 - By 

    I remember the first time I heard the term “free riders” being used in the context of the open education movement. It was at the Open Education Conference in 2015 in Vancouver when, during a presentation titled “The Economics of Open,” the Chief Executive of a for-profit player in the space was referring to those who reuse OER (including for monetary gain) without contributing anything to the commons. I remember reacting with some surprise because, as a co-author of open textbooks, I saw other people reusing my work as a measure of the impact of my efforts. Even as a…

  • OER

    What research on OER cannot tell us

    May 23, 2019 - By 

    I love reading research on OER. That so many researchers across so many institutional contexts are actively exploring issues related to cost, outcomes, use, and perceptions makes me happy. And that OER research continues to get more nuanced, more rigorous, more transparent, and more critical makes me happier still. Yet, as powerful as quantitative research (especially local studies) can be in bolstering the institutional case for investing in OER it is worth reminding ourselves periodically that this approach is limited in what it can tell us. Yes, research tells us that students will perform the same or better when they…

  • Academia - OER

    OER, Equity, and Implicit Creative Redlining

    April 6, 2018 - By 

    The open education movement wants to be a force for equity. The argument is straightforward and powerful: Widen access to educational resources and those who disproportionately suffer at the hands of the exploitative business models of commercial publishers will disproportionately benefit, in both economic and educational terms. As someone who has personally benefited from generous and life-changing sponsorship of access to a high quality education, this argument is not simply theoretical for me. It is my lived experience. This is why I will never stop pushing for nor understate the importance of widening access to education. But if the open…

  • Uncategorized

    Connect, Collaborate, Innovate: My first month at BCcampus

    October 10, 2017 - By 

    As I write this I am in the air, on my way to the #OpenEd17 conference in Anaheim. But as I reflect on my life over the past month—the first of my year-long secondment to BCcampus—I realize that for once my life has been anything but up in the air, as I have enjoyed the most rewarding and stable period of my work supporting the open education movement. It really is amazing what you can accomplish when you are able to pursue your passion on your desk, not just on evenings and weekends and at the expense of a healthy…

  • Open scholarship

    Trying something new: Sketchnoting my research

    August 14, 2017 - By 

    Inspired by George Veletsianos’ Research Shorts and a recent Sketching in Practice (SKiP) workshop I took with Amy Burvall, I am trying a new way of sharing my research: sketchnoting. In this first attempt, my co-author (and wife) Surita Jhangiani and I recorded a voice over summarizing our recent survey of the perceptions, use, and impact of open textbooks among post-secondary students in British Columbia. I then used the app Procreate to sketch on my iPad (exporting brief video clips with each additional segment) and finally used iMovie to stitch it all together. While I hope to produce more sophisticated…

  • Open textbooks

    “If you could tell a new open textbook author one thing, what would it be?”

    August 11, 2017 - By 

    Earlier this year, Linda Frederiksen (Head of Access Services, Washington State University Vancouver) reached out to me (along with several others) and posed this question. She has since done a wonderful job of synthesizing these suggestions into a chapter titled “Ten Tips for Authoring Success,” itself part of a new guide for Authoring Open Textbooks, edited by Melissa Falldin and Karen Lauritsen from the Open Textbook Network. I encourage you to read all of the ten tips provided by brilliant colleagues such as Amanda Coolidge, Lauri Aesoph, Dianna Fisher, Quill West, Amy Hofer, Mike Caulfield, and others. Here is what I…

  • Academia - OER - Publishers

    Just how inclusive are “inclusive access” e-textbook programs?

    June 29, 2017 - By 

    As is now well documented and understood, unrelenting increases in the prices of university textbooks (typically between 3 and 4 times the rate of inflation) have not been matched by increases in student spending. Whereas the U.S. College Board and the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada respectively advise students to budget US$1300 and CA$1000 per year for textbooks and other course materials, data collected by the National Association of College Stores (NACS) show that actual student spending on course materials has dropped to less than half that amount. The result is an increasingly strong relationship between the affordability of course…

  • The shadow of an open wrought iron gate falls on the ground
    OER - Pedagogy

    Openness, Gateways, and Agency

    May 3, 2017 - By 

    Consider the following personas: First, picture a faculty member who has just learned about the existence of open educational resources. Imagine that this faculty member then also learns about how many students (including by extension their own) are unable to afford required course materials. Assuming they are able to locate a relevant, good-enough quality, and openly-licensed resource, they may adopt OER in order to dampen the relationship between affordability and performance, motivated by concerns for student access and success. They may learn lessons from this first foray that—if not overly negative—may lead them to make incremental changes to their practice in all of…

  • OER - Open textbooks

    Pragmatism vs. Idealism and the Identity Crisis of OER Advocacy

    February 15, 2017 - By 

    In a couple of weeks I will be in Cape Town, presenting at the 2017 OE Global Conference. This blog post is a preview of some of the ideas I will discuss during my talk (which shares the title of this blog post). A longer version of this post is currently under review in Open Praxis. The open education movement has made and continues to make great strides, with the creation, adaptation, and adoption of OER slowly but surely becoming mainstream practice. However, as the adolescent OE movement enters a growth spurt that may see its use as primary courseware triple within five…