BCcampus and Creative Commons Partnership Offers Educators Open Licensing Training

By Lauri Aesoph, operations specialist, Open Education, BCcampus

In order to expand open licensing expertise in British Columbia, BCcampus has entered a partnership with Creative Commons (CC). Creative Commons is an international non-profit organization dedicated to helping build and sustain a thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture. 

Educators, librarians and anyone in the post-secondary sector in B.C. is invited to use a 15% discount code when registering for the CC Certificate program until June 2025.

Those who signed up for the June and September CC certificate 10-week courses, appreciated the personalized approach taken by expert facilitators and copyright lawyers.

Kaitlyn Zheng, a graduate of the program, who described her experience during a webinar on October 23, said that even though she’d worked in open education for years, she still learned new things and enjoyed hearing from colleagues from around the globe about their experiences in this field. She also appreciated that the course materials were still available online after completing the course.

Librarians Describe How This Training Helps Them Support Others

Two librarians from Yukon University earned the Creative Commons Certificate for Librarians in 2022.

Aline Goncalves, the iInformation literacy and reference librarian at Yukon U includes open educational resources and Creative Commons licences as part of the support she provides to faculty, staff, and students.

“The Creative Commons course gave me a much better understanding of how open licences and copyright work. It has allowed me to provide better support for both staff and students when creating their own works or using works by other authors,” said Aline.

As the metadata and systems librarian at Yukon University, Nora Hehemann’s position includes managing the institutional repository, liaising with university departments, and serving on the university’s steering committees, councils, and Senate. 

“The Creative Commons course provides a foundational understanding of copyright options and has grounded examples and resources that makes it easy to introduce to students and academics,” said Nora.

Schedule and Registration

The 15% discount code can be applied to training sessions offered in 2025. Sessions are open for registration and each one offers all three CC programs.  Registration closes one week before the course starts or once a session has sold out.   

January 2025 (January 27 – April 6, 2025) 
June 2025 (June 2 – August 10, 2025)

The three programs include:

CC Certificate for Educators: concentrates on communities involved in education
CC Certificate for Librarians: highlights communities involved in academic librarianship
CC Certificate for Open Culture: focuses on galleries, libraries, archives, and museums.

Please register by following these steps: 

Click on the CC Certificate registration link.  
Select the course you would like to take.   
Type BCCAMPUS15 in the promo code spot. You will see 15% deducted from the total amount owing before you pay.

Alternatively, an institution can register several of its faculty and staff at one time and pay in bulk by emailing: learning@creativecommons.org.   

Apply for CC Scholarships

To help the B.C. and Yukon post-secondary community gain access to this training and knowledge, BCcampus is offering two full scholarships for the January 2025 (January 27–April 6, 2025) session of the Creative Commons certificate course. Applications are due on December 6. See the Call for Proposals for other details.

Creative Commons is pleased to offer scholarships for their CC Certificate for Open Culture courses. To access a scholarship, use the code Y4GLAMSCHOLAR60 before May 31, 2025, to get 60% off the registration price. Additional course scholarships may be available later in 2025 for CC community members. 