The BCcampus Online Book Club started as a community-driven project by a group of volunteer post-secondary educators interested in opportunities to connect with colleagues on topics of professional interest in teaching and learning. The guidelines for this book club are that it is open, informal, and fun — an easy way for participants to share ideas and strategies and take what we learn to practice. We are pleased to announce the next book club, an online and open edition offered over three months in winter 2023 that will feature selections from the B.C. Open Collection and the Hybrid Pedagogy open access books.
Our featured reading and authors are as follows:
- January 9 – February 3: A Comprehensive Guide to Applying Universal Design for Learning by Dr. Seanna Takacs and Junsong Zhang
- February 6 – March 3: Teaching in a Digital Age by Dr. Tony Bates
- March 6 – March 31: Selected readings from Designing for Care
Participation is free, but registration as a book club member is required to receive weekly book club content and to join discussions with members and virtual conversations with authors. Register now for the BCcampus Online Book Club: The Open Edition.
Registration for February 6 – March 3 Session
Registration for March 6 – March 31 Session
Registration for the January session is now closed.
Facilitators
Leva Lee (she/her)
Leva is manager of Learning + Teaching at BCcampus. She has many years of experience leading online learning projects and professional development opportunities for the secondary and post-secondary education sectors in B.C., with a background in open and distance learning and educational technology. Her special interests are micro-learning design, fostering communities of practice, and creative facilitation practices for learning engagement. She is a Liberating Structures practitioner and an enthusiastic promoter of the B.C. post-secondary community and those committed to improving the student experience. When not online, you can find Leva inspecting her fledgling flower and vegetable garden, reading one of too many recipe books, or trying to eke out time in the day to sketch or do art.
Mattermost: @levalee
LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/levalee
Helena Prins (she/her)
Helena is an advisor of Learning + Teaching at BCcampus and coordinates the Facilitating Learning Online (FLO) portfolio. She began her career as a high-school teacher in South Africa. Over the past 20 years, Helena has taught students of all ages and stages on four continents. A golden thread throughout her teaching experiences has been breaking down barriers to learning. Prior to joining BCcampus in 2020, Helena worked as a career learning and development advisor at Royal Roads University. As an immigrant, she values the opportunity to support all students, especially international students, in finding and building their career path in Canada. She is a certified career strategist with Career Professionals Canada and associate faculty at Royal Roads University.
Mattermost: @hprins
LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/helenaprins
This notice is to inform you that this session will be recorded, archived, and made available publicly on BCcampus.ca. By participating in this session, you acknowledge that your participation in this session will be recorded and the recording will be made available openly.

Join us for a conversation with instructional designers Parm Gill and Dave Smulders.
Parm and Dave are the guest speakers for the March 2023 BCcampus Online Book Club – The Open Edition. You do not need to be a member of the book club to attend this session.
Register now!
The BCcampus Online Book Club started as a community-driven project by a group of volunteer post-secondary educators interested in opportunities to connect with colleagues on topics of professional interest in teaching and learning. The guidelines for this book club are that it is open, informal, and fun — an easy way for participants to share ideas and strategies and take what we learn to practice.
Related Events:
- BCcampus Online Book Club: A Conversation with Dr. Seanna Takacs and Junsong Zhang on January 31, 2023
- BCcampus Online Book Club: A Conversation with Dr. Tony Bates on February 21, 2023
This notice is to inform you that this session will be recorded, archived, and made available publicly on BCcampus.ca. By participating in this session, you acknowledge that your participation in this session will be recorded and the recording will be made available openly.

This event is a part of the OER Production Series. Are you an open educational resources (OER) beginner or returning OER professional looking to refresh your knowledge about access and options for OER? In this session, we will provide a meeting place to exchange information, practice skills, and answer questions about getting started with OER. We discuss copyright and Creative Commons licenses, provide background on open education tools and tasks, and study together how to find, use, and properly attribute OER. To view the other events in this series, visit OER Production Series.
Facilitator: Maryann Kempthorne (she/her) is a coordinator of open publishing at BCcampus and works on the Open Education team. She is a librarian with a background in software, systems, curriculum publishing, and accessibility. She has been fortunate to work across B.C. and Canada supporting the efforts of communities and individuals to make learning resources accessible and discoverable.
This event is free. To ensure we have an inclusive and welcoming environment for all, we’ve added registration to all our sessions.
Register now!
This notice is to inform you that this session will be recorded, archived, and made available publicly on BCcampus.ca. By participating in this session, you acknowledge that your participation in this session will be recorded and the recording will be made available openly.

This event is a part of the OER Production Series and the first session in our exploration of accessibility and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in open educational resources (OER). In this webinar, we will introduce how to design OER that meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). We describe the principles behind WCAG, introduce assistive technologies, and explain how to create accessible tables, images, videos, audio, links, and math equations. By creating educational materials with accessibility in mind, we can ensure these resources are more useful, powerful, and accessible to all. The session will include lots of concrete examples and opportunities to apply learning. To view the other events in the series, visit OER Production Series.
Facilitator: Harper Friedman (he/him) is a coordinator of open textbook publishing with the Open Education team at BCcampus. He provides support for B.C. faculty by helping them create OER, primarily in Pressbooks. As part of his work, Harper has been learning and applying accessibility best practices and making educational resources more accessible for more students.
This event is free. To ensure we have an inclusive and welcoming environment for all, we’ve added registration to all our sessions.
Register now!
This notice is to inform you that this session will be recorded, archived, and made available publicly on BCcampus.ca. By participating in this session, you acknowledge that your participation in this session will be recorded and the recording will be made available openly.

This event is a part one of two events in the OER Production Series that will discuss how to use Pressbooks to create and share open educational resources (OER). Pressbooks is an online self-publishing tool used by open publishers across North America and available to all post-secondary faculty and staff in B.C. and the Yukon. Topics include an introduction to Pressbooks, how to create an account, how to create a book in Pressbooks, and an overview of the Pressbooks editor. The webinar will also introduce topics such as creating math equations using MathJax, importing content, H5P, and sharing books in multiple formats.
To view the other events in this series, visit OER Production Series.
Facilitator Biography:
Kaitlyn Zheng (she/her) is the coordinator of open textbooks publishing at BCcampus. She has been working in open publishing in Pressbooks with the BCcampus Open Education team, and providing support for BC faculty publishing open educational resources.
This event is free. To ensure we have an inclusive and welcoming environment for all, we’ve added registration to all our sessions.
Register now!
This notice is to inform you that this session will be recorded, archived, and made available publicly on BCcampus.ca. By participating in this session, you acknowledge that your participation in this session will be recorded and the recording will be made available openly.

This event is part of the OER Production Series. Pressbooks is an online self-publishing tool available to all post-secondary faculty and staff in B.C. and the Yukon. This webinar is a continuation of the introductory Pressbooks webinar, where we taught the basics of the platform. In this session, we will explore how to make the most of the many features in Pressbooks while ensuring accessibility and usability for students.
This will include:
- How to create complex content, like interactive H5P activities and math equations
- How to customize the display of things like text, tables, and textboxes
- How to make your Pressbook easier to navigate
- How to fill out metadata fields
- What to consider with different export formats (webbook, .pdf, and .epub)
- A tour of some existing open educational resources (OER) created in Pressbooks to explore the range of ways people have used it.
To view the other events in this series, visit OER Production Series.
Facilitator: Josie Gray (she/her) is the manager of Production and Publishing at BCcampus. She manages the B.C. Open Collection and provides training and support for B.C. faculty publishing open textbooks in Pressbooks. She has been working with Pressbooks for more than six years and always delights in helping people figure out the platform to create OER.
This event is free. To ensure we have an inclusive and welcoming environment for all, we’ve added registration to all our sessions.
Register now!
This notice is to inform you that this session will be recorded, archived, and made available publicly on BCcampus.ca. By participating in this session, you acknowledge that your participation in this session will be recorded and the recording will be made available openly.

This event in the OER Production Series is part two of our exploration of accessibility and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in open educational resources (OER). In this session we build on what we know about technical accessibility to explore how to go beyond minimum accessibility requirements. We dig into concepts like the social model of disability and how UDL can be applied in the design of OER. We explore multimodality as well as the benefits, challenges, and considerations of digital vs. print formats. The session will include concrete examples and opportunities to apply learning. To view the other events in this series, visit OER Production Series.
Facilitator:
Josie Gray (she/her) is the manager of Production and Publishing at BCcampus. She manages the B.C. Open Collection and provides training and support for B.C. faculty publishing open textbooks in Pressbooks. Josie has been learning about and teaching accessibility best practices in OER for over six years and completed her Master of Design in Inclusive Design degree at OCAD University in 2021.
This event is free. To ensure we have an inclusive and welcoming environment for all, we’ve added registration to all our sessions.
Register now!
This notice is to inform you that this session will be recorded, archived, and made available publicly on BCcampus.ca. By participating in this session, you acknowledge that your participation in this session will be recorded and the recording will be made available openly.