Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) is a public undergraduate teaching university with four campuses located in the Metro Vancouver region of British Columbia, Canada. Individual instructors at KPU began identifying, adapting, and adopting Open Educational Resources (OER) as open textbooks as early as 2012, most notably in the Physics department, where faculty adapted the United States-based OpenStax College Physics textbook for use in their first-year classes.

The launch of the BC Open Textbook project in 2012 signaled a system-wide initiative funded by the Ministry for Advanced Education (BC Open Textbook, 2016). KPU was able to provide faculty with a web-based platform (Pressbooks (link is external)) to more easily edit open textbooks, to make digital copies available across a variety of formats, and to provide professional quality print copies of open textbooks at low cost. The BC Open Textbook project also supported the creation and adaptation of open textbooks to suit the local context, such as for Canadian History and Research Methods in Psychology.

This article discusses the benefits, challenges and potential of implementing OER at this institution.

More articles can be found at Contact North/Contact Nord: https://teachonline.ca/tools-trends/open-education-resources-oer-applications-around-world/taxonomy-term

Keywords

OER awareness campaign · open pedagogy · open textbooks · question bank · student created OER