This project is now complete.
For the past several years, commercial publishers have been marketing online tools to faculty that provide a curriculum to students, including textbooks, ancillary resources, and homework systems. These commercial platforms can impose a significant financial burden on students who are required to use them. Thanks to funding from the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills in 2019, BCcampus supported institutions, stakeholders, and faculty to identify, develop, and implement freely available resources that replace proprietary commercial publishers’ homework platforms.
Goal
Our goal was to reduce the cost of post-secondary education for students by lowering the cost of access to homework systems.
Activity
BCcampus began the Open Homework Systems (OHS) project by conducting a comparative analysis of three open-source math homework systems: WeBWorK, iMathAS, and Numbas. This review focused on and resulted in reports in three areas: faculty and student user experience (User Report), technical setup (Technical Report), and accessibility (Accessibility Review).
The following is a summary of the activities and open educational resources that resulted from the OHS project.
Support for grantees:
- H5P Kitchen website and H5P support webinars
More than 2500 questions added to five open homework systems:
Over 1200 H5P activities added to 11 B.C. Open Collection textbooks:
- Concepts of Biology, 1st Canadian Edition
- Foundations in Digital Marketing
- Introduction to Tourism and Hospitality in BC, 2nd Edition
- Le Français Interactif — An Activity Companion Site
- Physical Geology, H5P Edition
- Principles of Marketing, H5P Edition
- Principles of Social Psychology, 1st International H5P Edition
- Psychology, H5P Edition
- Technical Writing Essentials, H5P Edition
- Vital Sign Measurement Across the Lifespan, 2nd Canadian Edition
- Writing for Success, 1st Canadian H5P Edition
All the activities are openly licensed with Creative Commons licences to allow them to be freely copied and reused by other educators.
Further Information
If you have questions about the project or ideas about open homework systems, please contact us.
Download the Open Homework Systems poster to share with colleagues, or contact us for print copies.