Background

In 2020, York University Libraries developed an open education training program for faculty that received teaching innovation grants through York University’s Academic Innovation Fund (AIF). While the fund had been active since 2011, it was only starting in 2020 that AIF recipients were required to produce a component of their project that was licensed with a Creative Commons licence to facilitate the re-use, and potentially the re-mixing, of the content by educators inside and outside of York University.

The program was originally conceived as an in-person workshop series; however, with the COVID-19 campus closure, it was redesigned into a four module synchronous and asynchronous educational program delivered via Moodle, H5P and Zoom. Modelled after the SUNY Open Educational Resources (OER) Community Course and materials from Abbey Elder’s OER Starter Kit, the program gave grant recipients a grounding in open educational resources, searching open course material repositories, Canadian copyright basics, Creative Commons licensing, and how to deposit content in York’s institutional repository, including OER metadata creation and accessibility considerations. The librarians modelled best practices in the use and creation of Creative Commons licensed resources throughout the program.

For additional information, please review the presentation delivered by Sarah Coysh and Stephanie Quail at eCampusOntario’s 2020 Technology and Education Seminar and Showcase conference.

Current Iteration of the Training Program

Since 2020, the program has been offered four times at York University. It has now been redeveloped as a fully asynchronous learning experience for York instructors and staff. Participants no longer need to be an AIF project lead. The content is delivered over a 1-month period; however, participants maintain access to the materials for a full year. The initial program covered the following topics:

• Module 1: OER 101
• Module 2: Copyright and Open Licensing
• Module 3: Finding and Evaluating OER
• Module 4: Depositing into YorkSpace (York’s institutional repository)

However, Module 4 was replaced with a module on Adapting and Creating OER in 2022. This helped meet the identified needs of instructors who wanted to learn more about adapting existing OER and common tools for creating new OER. Therefore, the current training modules as of late 2023 are:

• Module 1: OER 101
• Module 2: Copyright and Open Licensing
• Module 3: Finding and Evaluating OER
• Module 4: Adapting and Creating OER

When York instructors now want to deposit their OER into YorkSpace’s OER collection, they are asked to use YorkSpace’s mediated deposit program to ensure that their deposits align with YorkSpace’s submission guidelines for metadata and file formats.

Structure of Program

Each module consists of four components:

• Warm-up activity (optional)
• Pre-recorded lecture (required)
• Building block activity (optional)
• Additional resources (optional)

The Warm-up activity typically includes a short reading or video. Students are also asked to complete a short questionnaire that the facilitators can use to better understand students’ pre-existing knowledge of the topic.

The Pre-recorded lecture is built using H5P’s interactive course presentation content type. Each lecture contains a set of interactive videos, as well as other exercises. This resource includes the H5P resources and also includes links to the transcripts and the slides used to create the videos. All of the content is licensed Creative Commons Attribution, with the exception of the H5P exercise in Module 2. This content is licensed using Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike due to the inclusion of a specific video resource.

The Building block activity typically incorporate a short reading, video, or in the case of Module 3, a specific OER finding exercise. Students are encouraged to post their answers to specific questions in a discussion forum.

The Additional resources section of each module contains a list of articles, websites, and other resources students can consult to learn more about specific topics.

Reporting Adaptations

Please use the following form if you would like to report an adaptation of this training program.