BCcampus is the proud recipient of a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in the amount of $900 000 USD over three years to support open education in B.C.
This grant gives us the ability to keep providing open education materials and support to post-secondary institutions in B.C. Being recognized by such a well-known and highly regarded organization shows we are on the right path, and we’re excited to continue to build the foundation for the open education movement in Canada. This is BCcampus’ third grant from the Hewlett Foundation. In 2015, BCcampus was awarded $525 000 USD over three years to support the Open Textbook Project in British Columbia and in 2018 the grant was renewed for an additional $525 000 USD over three years.
BCcampus activities will focus on:
- Combatting high-cost inclusive access courseware platforms with open courseware solutions
- Improving access to open educational resources for northern B.C. institutions
- Creating, adapting, and adopting inclusive, diverse, culturally relevant open educational resource (OER) content and pedagogical practice
- Improving access to vocational trades through the creation of OER and use of open educational pedagogical practices
B.C. was the first jurisdiction in Canada to launch a government-sponsored open textbook project. An estimated 200 000 students in B.C. have saved more than $24 million with open textbooks. With this funding, we are optimistic about what we can do for students in terms of both access and better learning experiences.
More than 340 open textbooks are now available in the B.C. Open Textbook Collection, with titles ranging from popular first- and second-year subjects such as math, chemistry, and business to skills and technical subjects, including trades, tourism, hospitality, health care, and adult upgrading.
B.C. is working with other jurisdictions across Canada to make it easier to share resources and develop open textbooks that benefit students and instructors.
Learn More:
The feature image for this post (viewable in the BCcampus News section at the bottom of our homepage) is by Bilakis from Pexels