Announcements

Student Cost Savings at the University of Regina

The following table shows the cost savings for University of Regina students through OER published by UR Press and the OER Publishing Program between 2015 – 2023.

Table 1.1 Current OER Cost savings at the University of Regina

In addition, the University of Regina instituted a zero-cost materials strategy for courses in 2020. These are courses that use a combination of affordable educational resources (open access materials, OER and freely available library materials). Up to this point, 12, 389 students have been impacted by this initiative with cost savings of $1, 858, 350.

Table 1.2 Current Zero-cost Materials cost savings at the University of Regina

OER Creation Toolkit

The OEP Program has created a toolkit to aid in the creation of open resources.  This toolkit has been created to provide University of Regina faculty and instructors with an introduction to the use and creation of opne educational resources (OER). The text is broken into five sections:

• Getting started - an introduction to open educational resources
• Copyright - basics on copyright and open licensing
• Finding OER - information on where to find OER including repositories and search tools
• Teaching with OER - basic information on using OER in the classroom including a description of open pedagogy along with related issues of doversity and inclusion
• Creating OER - some basic information on tools for creating OER, accessibility and usability
• Appendices - includes a checklist for accessibility, inclusive design webinar series and a video on improving the accessibility of your online course.

Although some chapters contain more advanced content, the toolkit is primarily intended for users who are entirely new to Open Education.

The toolkit is a living document and will be updated periodically as relevant information for inclusion is identified. There are references to resources providing additional information for the interested reader. The toolkit can be accessed through the link: OER Creation Toolkit[HTML].