A recent tweet from Dr. Tony Bates provided the nudge I needed to update my collection of Canadian teaching online resources shared during the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve been watching the generous outpouring of tips, webinars, workshops, resources from the US and Canada, aimed at helping teachers pivoting to online teaching. I’ve poked at a couple of summaries of resources (from a collection focused on helping learners moving to online by Clint Lalonde to recordings of drop-in COVID-related webinars hosted by BCcampus) but I thought there were probably some others I’d missed!
BC’s higher education institutions are onboard with open practices so I expected to find a lot of open licensed materials; I was a little overly optimistic 😉 But, a rich vein to mine first is BCcampus (as their purpose is to support all post-secondary institutions in improving teaching and learning practice.) Allow some time to browse their open, online options to help you “pivot” to online teaching; review previous resources for Open Education, and subscribe to their free newsletter to stay connected. And if you want browse a wider collection, check out the Information Directory – COVID-19 Educational Resources.
University of BC is also a leader in open practices (imho) so I took a look at Effective Online Teaching Practices. If you’re looking for a course, rather than an assembly of resources and links, check out CTLT’s Introduction to Online Teaching. These open-licensed resources for this course are also available on the UBC Wiki (and were the subject of Tony Bates Jun 25th blog post.) Plus there’s the amazing open-licensed, practical resources at OpenBC.
Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Educational Excellence seems to protect most of their COVID-19 webinars (you need a campus login) but you can browse their OERs from previous years at https://www.sfu.ca/oer.html
Burnaby’s BCIT hosted a number of sessions on teaching online that are available on their Faculty Help for Online Teaching page but they appear to be very focused on BCIT instructors need for D2L, etc. I didn’t find too much on their Open Education Resources site that might help instructors trying to adapt quickly to online teaching (useful for other purposes though).
Kwantlen Polytechnic University offers some thoughtfully produced resources for their instructors “who need to plan and facilitate teaching and learning activities remotely in the event of an unexpected campus closure.” The nice thing is they have created resources that are useful to anyone faced with this situation (and they’re currently leaving them open to access). Their Keep Teaching page offers interactive resources to: Getting started with Remote Delivery; options for instructors wanting to Use Moodle or Not; things to think about when Designing Online Courses; and Learning Opportunities (external & internal). And as one of the leaders in the open education field, KPU has a rich trove of resources in their Open Education site – really worth taking time to browse different sections like the Open Pedagogy Notebook (a personal favourite!).
Royal Roads University in Victoria has a broad range of resources for their staff and faculty but, as an outsider, you’ll need to find your way to their Open Educational Resources pages for help with teaching online.
The University of Northern BC doesn’t appear to have any OERs yet but the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology offers an interesting (and varied) collection of helpful videos on their Youtube channel
That’s all for BC – next week I’ll look further east – Enjoy exploring….Sylvia