Openly Licensed Learning Materials

Openly Licensed Learning Materials

Guest Post: FSA Member & BCIT Librarian, Lin Brander. Lin is the Open Education Librarian at BCIT. She is Co-Chair of BCIT’s Open Education Working Group and Chairs the BCOEL (BC Open Education Librarians).

This is an ideal time for faculty to consider licensing and using open educational resources (OER). Using OER can save faculty time and effort as openly licensed materials can be adopted as they are or adapted to suit class learning objectives. Students will benefit from low or zero textbook costs (ZTC).

• BCIT’s Open Education Best Practices and Guidelines
• Open Education at BCIT

A Few Advantages of Using OER

• OER is shared in digital format so it is easy to add openly licensed materials to online learning management systems.
• Using OER means that you do not have to start from scratch. Open licenses give you various permissions that usually allow you to do the following with the materials: retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute.
• OER encompasses a wide range of materials, including textbooks, presentation slides, handouts, videos, images, and much more.

If you are looking for OER, you can start here and you can contact your liaison librarians via email for help.

Openly Licensing Learning Materials

Creators of open educational resources retain the copyright for their work. While their intellectual property is protected, the authors have chosen to release their work using an open license which gives non-exclusive, worldwide, indefinite permissions for others to use the work without contacting the author. Creative Commons is the organization that has created the licenses, and legal way, for you to do this.

• Find out more about creating OER here
• For help with open licensing, contact Lin Brander

BCIT’s Open Education Publishing Program Pilot

BCIT Library is running an open education publishing program pilot over the next several months. If you have digital learning materials that are suitable for conversion to PressBooks and that you want to license openly, the library will do that conversion for you.

• To find out more, please contact Lin Brander

Library Materials

This is also a good time for faculty to explore the BCIT library databases for learning materials to use with students to help keep student costs low – there are thousands of fully online books, journals articles, training videos, and much more online.

You can contact your liaison librarians via email for help; or, chat with a BCIT Librarian 11-3 weekdays through AskAway.