A new partnership between BCcampus and Learning Equality will support learners in remote communities across British Columbia where internet access is limited or unavailable. Using Kolibri, digital content can be customized and made available for local use.
Through this initiative, BCcampus is investigating solutions to expand learning experiences and offer its extensive collection of open course materials to remote communities in B.C.
“Kolibri is a great platform for BCcampus as it helps us bring our exceptional open educational resources to remote and rural areas of the province without broadband or reliable internet service,” says Harper Friedman, coordinator of open textbook publishing at BCcampus. “It has three elements helping us reach more learners in B.C.: enabling the sharing of high-quality content, providing independence from internet connection while maintaining the same features and functionality, and offering free access.”
In April 2021, BCcampus received a grant of $900,000 from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. One of the four key deliverables of the grant is to improve access to open educational resources (OER) for northern B.C. institutions. Further, it supports the creation, adaption, and adoption of inclusive, diverse, culturally relevant OER content and pedagogical practices.
Kolibri is an adaptable set of open solutions designed to support learning for those without internet access. At its core is a learning platform running on a variety of low-cost and legacy devices. The Kolibri Product Ecosystem includes a curricular tool, an extensive OER library, and a set of resources to support training and implementation across formal, informal, and non-formal learning environments.
Kolibri is used in over 200 countries and territories around the world and serves millions of learners and educators living in contexts where internet access is costly, unreliable, or simply beyond reach.
Starting this spring, BCcampus is working to make more than 80 open textbooks available for use in Kolibri. We are developing examples of how this approach can not only make available, but also allow, for the textbooks to be remixed with other content in the Kolibri Library catalog. These resources can then be accessed through the Kolibri “offline-first” learning platform.
Beyond making BCcampus content more accessible, our open textbooks containing interactive elements like H5P and video have also been migrated to Kolibri. These resources are now available to learners without access to the online versions.
BCcampus believes that OER, including open textbooks and courses in the B.C. Open Collection, fosters student-centred learning. This approach empowers faculty and students, further improving the entire post-secondary system of B.C. This commitment is one of the cornerstones of BCcampus’ mandate.
Webinar
In celebration of this collaboration, BCcampus invites you to a special webinar on May 22 at 1:00 p.m. We will introduce the Kolibri platform, showcase its impact, and offer examples and insights into its functionality from both learner and educator perspectives. Additionally, we will demonstrate how BCcampus open textbooks, including interactive content, have seamlessly transitioned to Kolibri, ensuring access without internet connectivity. Registration is free and open to all.
Partners
Based in San Diego, Learning Equality is an EdTech non-profit dedicated to creating quality learning opportunities for the third of the world without connectivity. Their work is primarily focused around Kolibri, an ecosystem of open products and tools designed for teaching and learning with tech but without the internet. Through the development of innovative offline-first educational technology, Learning Equality is bridging the digital divide and building equity in education across the globe.
As one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the United States, the Hewlett Foundation promotes constructive dialogue across difference, and provides reliable, responsive, and strategic support to their partners. They are working to build an inclusive society where people, communities, and the planet flourish.