BCcampus is pleased to announce grant awards to three new projects, in addition to the four awarded this fall, that will grow our collection of open courses with high-quality, relevant course materials for educators that are suitable for programs in B.C. and beyond:
- Human Biology (adult basic education [ABE])
- Math (ABE)
- Physics
The three grant recipients share in common that they have all been recipients of the BCcampus Award for Excellence in Open Education, which recognizes ongoing contributions to open education in B.C. We are pleased to have the opportunity to support their important work with the open course development grants this year.
Christine Miller, MEd
Assistant teaching professor, Thompson Rivers University
Course: Human Biology (ABE)
Human Biology is a provincially articulated course equivalent to both B.C. ABE provincial-level Biology and grade 12 Anatomy and Physiology. Christine firmly believes ABE should be free for any student who wishes to complete high-school equivalent courses. ABE students are often from disadvantaged populations, and education is the great social equalizer. Christine has already contributed an open textbook adaptation, a set of lecture slides, and a corresponding set of fill-in-the-blanks notes to this open course and is now adding a lab manual with a series of eight labs meant to reinforce the course concepts and encourage students’ lab-skill development and exploration of the scientific method, including assessments. In addition she will create a bank of practice/test questions for student and instructor use. The course will be designed to be used in conjunction with Christine’s open textbook Human Biology: Human Anatomy and Physiology.
Meizhong Wang, MSc, Eng.
Course: Intermediate Level Math (ABE)
The open ABE intermediate-level math course will contain the curriculum (syllabus, lesson plan, lecture notes, chapter assignments, self-tests, chapter tests, midterm exam, final exams, answer keys, etc.) to meet all the ABE intermediate math learning outcomes in the ABE Articulation Handbook. The course materials can be used to assist instructors to update/modify or create their own math courses and can be delivered online, in person, or in a HyFlex (hybrid-flexible) format. The lesson plans will be designed to be used in conjunction with the open textbook Key Concepts of Intermediate Level Math, which provides a concise, understandable, and effective guide on intermediate-level math. Meizhong’s math book is one of the most downloaded ABE resources in the BCcampus collection.
Jennifer Kirkey, MSc
Instructor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Douglas College
Course: Physics III
Jennifer Kirkey has been teaching physics and astronomy at Douglas College for more than 30 years and has been using open textbooks in her courses since 2015. She is the chair of the British Columbia Council on Admissions & Transfer Physics and Astronomy Articulation Committee and was a BCcampus Faculty Fellow for open textbooks in 2016–2017. Her COVID-19 project has been working on open problems for first-year mechanics students using WeBWorK.
Physics III (PHYSIII), in the provincial first-year engineering curriculum, PHYS170, at UBC, is the only course in the first-year curriculum that does not have an open textbook. To this end Jennifer has been working in collaboration with Agnes d’Entremont (UBC) to develop open homework problems for physics to eliminate the need for costly commercial textbooks in the subject. The natural outgrowth of her years of work on open educational resources is to make a complete open course that will include instructor materials, including lesson plans and problem sets for practice and assessments.
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