Open Education Resources (OER)

OER (Open Educational Resources) are teaching, learning and research resources that are created by teaching faculty and free to access, use, copy, share, adapt and modify with few or no copyright restrictions. This includes course materials, and textbooks.

OER matters because they offer affordability by eliminating the need for students to purchase textbooks and course reading materials In addition to removing barriers faced by financially disadvantaged students, OER offers course materials in digital format with the ability to add accessible formats which helps address barriers related to geographic isolation and differing abilities. They also offer flexibility in curriculum delivery because content can be modified to meet updated course objectives and learning outcomes

Students as well as faculty across different institutions and geographic locations can participate collaboratively in OER creation and modification which increases the diversity of voice in course reading materials and encourages innovation in teaching and learning

Academic libraries have a key role to play in advocacy, education, collection, curation and use assessment of OER. To ensure that the library is offering top-notch supports for faculty and students interested in OER, Sam Cheng, Open Education and Copyright Librarian, is enrolled as part of the 2022-23 cohort of the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program which empowers librarians as leaders for open education on campus.

SPARC is a non-profit and social justice advocacy organization which has partnered with over 250 educational institutions in North America to lead the way on increased equitable access to knowledge through open resources

Goal 4: Quality Education (contd)

Key Indicator Data/Outcome

1 Develop students’ critical thinking skills by scaffolding metaliteracy instruction into curriculum

In 2022, there were over half a million views of the library guides created to support students in researching assignments. Library staff provided 566 research and citation workshops reaching over 12K students through library instruction.

2. Expose students to expertise in their professional communities via robust library collections

The library circulated approximately 5K print items in 2022.

The extensive collections are 85% digital (e.g., there are 730K e-books), allowing maximum access to research. The library had 77 interlibrary loan requests (internal and external) and also allows faculty access to University of Toronto collections through a borrower privileges program

TLA3 project (See story about the initiative on p. 12)