Nominated by Sara McPhee-Knowles, assistant professor, School of Business and Leadership, and Lisa Kanary, instructor, Business Administration, School of Business and Leadership, Yukon University
This month’s award goes to Colleen Grandy, a senior instructor for both the School of Business and Leadership and the Teaching and Learning team at Yukon University. She is the first person from the Yukon to receive this recognition from BCcampus!
Colleen is a tireless champion for open educational resources (OER) at her institution. Any time the topic of choosing course materials comes up, Colleen advocates for OER. She leads by example, incorporating OER into her own teaching practice and demonstrating to interested colleagues how she does it. For example, in 2019, Colleen reworked her COMM 100: Business Communications course to incorporate an open textbook, even though there was a very good Canadian textbook available that she had used for many years. This course is part of the Multimedia Communication certificate program at Yukon University, which has zero textbook costs.
Colleen has been invaluable in helping her colleagues transition to and create OER. In 2020, she helped Sara McPhee-Knowles search for and incorporate smaller OER into the course MKTG 231: Marketing Management. As a member of the Teaching and Learning team, Colleen regularly supports faculty in the adoption of open textbooks for their courses, advocates for the open licensing and sharing of resources, and hosts sessions that incorporate the open sharing of pedagogies.
Colleen also assists her colleagues with the creation and adaptation of OER. In summer 2021, she helped Lisa Kanary with creating a northern Canadian adaptation of an introduction to business statistics OER to incorporate equity, diversity, and inclusion considerations. This OER — Introduction to Business Statistics Problem Ancillary Materials: Yukon Edition — is being used in MATH 210: Applied Statistics at Yukon University. Created with the help of grant funding from BCcampus, this resource includes numerous examples of business statistics applications that are useful in the context of northern Canadian businesses.
Colleen and the Yukon University Teaching and Learning team hosted their first Open Classrooms Week in March 2023. Run as part of the globally recognized Open Education Week, this event was intended to allow faculty to share their teaching and learning practices and pedagogies with each other. Faculty from a variety of subjects volunteered to open their classrooms to their colleagues, encouraging the breaking down of silos and inspiring their peers to innovate in their own courses. The event was such a success that the team now intends to hold it annually.
Currently, Colleen is co-creating a course textbook with her students in LEAD 352: reQUEST, an experimental leadership course in the School of Business and Leadership. The fall 2023 cohort collaboratively created a draft of the book as their final assignment, and Colleen is hoping to publish this resource with the help of the spring 2024 cohort. The plan is to have LEAD 352 students contribute to, update, and revise this open textbook going forward.
Congratulations to Colleen!
Notable Quotes:
“Colleen’s commitment to accessible and inclusive education as a pedagogical approach is truly inspiring. I have gained valuable insights personally from co-teaching with her. Her love for teaching is truly empowering.”
—Ninad Dhawle, instructor, Teaching and Learning and School of Business and Leadership
“In addition to her work promoting OER, Colleen is a passionate advocate for and supporter of open educational practices at Yukon University. For example, she initiated an annual Open Classrooms event, as part of Open Education Week, which creates opportunities for faculty to open up their classrooms to colleagues and to learn from observing others. As a member of the Teaching and Learning team, she has been key in embedding openness and learning from peers as key values and practices in the team’s model of support and facilitation.”
—Jane Maxwell, instructor, Teaching and Learning
“Colleen advocates strongly for OER and open pedagogy as a way to increase the accessibility of learning for all students. She uses open education as a way to facilitate collaboration, connection, and diversity in the learning environment. Colleen’s pedagogical approach not only enriches the learning experiences of her students, but also serves as an inspiration for fellow faculty members.”
—Hillarie Zimmermann, chair, School of Business and Leadership
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