Open Horizons: Affordability and Access through Open Education

Manitoba Open Education Symposium

Wednesday, June 11 to Thursday, June 12, 2025

100 Innovation Drive, University of Manitoba

Program details and registration 

Speakers 

Speakers include: 

• Amanda Coolidge, Executive Director of BCcampus 

• Robert Luke, CEO, eCampusOntario 

• Apurva Ashok, Executive Director at the Rebus Foundation 

BCcampus and eCampusOntario are provincial hubs that collaborate with post-secondary institutions to support online learning.  

About open education 

Open education is a movement that promotes free and open access to educational resources, tools, and practices to reduce barriers to learning. Read more about open education at UM. 

The symposium will bring together educators, students and administrators to discuss how to build an open and accessible education system that encourages digital innovation, collaboration across institutions, and is affordable for students. 

Register now 

Space is limited, so register now to be part of this event that will drive the future of open education in the province and beyond. 

The Manitoba Open Education Symposium is organized by Campus Manitoba, Assiniboine College, RRC Polytech, the University of Winnipeg, and the University of Manitoba. 

Education: The Future is Open 

Friday, March 7, 2025, 2:30-4:00 p.m. 
Senate Chamber, Room E3-262 EITC 
This session will be in-person with a live-stream option. 
Details and registration 
 
Richard Baraniuk [BSc (Eng)/87] will share his experience with the Open Education movement, a grassroots movement shared by a wide range of academics, recognizing that: 

• knowledge should be free and open to use and re-use 

• collaboration should be easier, not harder 

• people should receive credit and kudos for contributions to education and research 

• concepts and ideas are linked in unusual and surprising ways and not the simple linear forms that traditional media present 

Baraniuk will speak to this pivotal moment for the OpenEd community to come together as education is reshaped by advances in AI, evolving student needs, and expanding global challenges.  

About the presenter 

Dr. Richard G. Baraniuk, a graduate of the University of Manitoba, is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University and founder and director of OpenStax (formerly Connexions) as a platform for open knowledge sharing and the world’s largest OER publisher with more than 70 digital textbooks used by 7 million college and high school students this school year. He is also the founder and director of SafeInsights, a large-scale education research hub that will safely connect educational institutions, researchers, and learning platforms. Baraniuk has been active in AI theory research and education applications for 15 years and is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors, AAAS, and IEEE.  He has received numerous research and education awards, including the IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal, the James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal, and the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education. 

This event is supported by the Advance Open Ed project. 

At the University of Manitoba, Bisons are at the centre of health care, finance, Reconciliation and so much more. Wherever there’s a challenge, you’ll find UM alumni leading the charge. Explore the Bisons at the Centre campaign and meet the alumni shaping Manitoba and beyond. 

Related activities 

• Check out the previous event in the series: From Access to Justice: Realizing the Transformative Potential of Open Educational Practices, with Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani. 

• Advance Open Ed provides financial and practical support along with educational opportunities to help the UM community create, adapt, and adopt open educational resources (OER).  

There are numerous benefits to publishing research open access, including increased exposure and impact. Open publishing is also a requirement of many research funders, including the Canadian tri-agency funding bodies. However, UM researchers who publish their research in peer-reviewed, open access journals often bear the cost of Article Processing Charges (APCs). These charges average over $2000 per article and are dictated by the publishers.  

UM Libraries is often able to reduce APC costs by 15 to 20% and, in some cases, have the entire APC cost waived, which can save researchers thousands of dollars per article. By working with library consortia such as the Canadian Research Knowledge Network, UM Libraries has acquired APC discounts or waivers for over 9000 open access journals.  

Faculty and researchers can now search for this APC discount and waiver information using the library’s new database. In addition to searching by journal title, researchers can also use this new tool to filter the list of journals by subject area and by discount or waiver amount.  

Browse the UM Libraries APC Discount & Waiver Database. 

The promotion and support of open scholarship are essential to UM’s realization of its commitments to research excellence. UM Libraries supports faculty in publishing scholarly articles openly, making research data available, creating or adopting open education resources (OER), and in open journal publishing. 

Explore Open@UM to learn more about open access and open scholarship at UM. 

In celebration of International Open Access Week, October 21 – 27, 2024, here are two funding recipients whose open educational resources are already being used by students.

Celine Latulipe

Celine Latulipe, professor with the Department of Computer Science, has developed the Java Active Learning Workbook, an open educational resource that includes programming activities designed to be scaffolded. The workbook is used in COMP 1020, a course recently updated from traditional lecture-style to spending more time doing active learning activities. Taught in Java, the course is meant to prepare students to do programming required in later classes.

The workbook was developed using the Trinket open-web-based platform, with explanatory text and embedded instructions included, and allows students to write code online in the pages of the workbook.  

Students follow the instructions and edit the code to test their understanding and ability to apply the concepts.

Open-access workbook helps students learn worldwide

Thus far, student feedback on the open-access workbook has been overwhelmingly positive, with 85% of survey respondents indicating that the trinket activities helped them to test their understanding of the material. In the open-ended feedback, students talked about being surprised by how helpful the trinkets were and how they were better than just listening to lectures, especially in terms of how they helped them do better on tests.

“I wanted the trinkets to be an open resource because there are students all over the world who want to learn programming and having an organized, scaffolded workbook of practice activities can be helpful,” Latulipe says. After a bit more refinement, the team will be submitting the workbook to EngageCSEdu, an online repository of open-access computer science education resources.

Julianne Doner (Photo credit: Joy Wells of Pure Joy Photography, Kingston.)

Julianne Doner, linguistics resources designer, is writing an open, digital textbook for a second-year course in Introductory Morphology and Syntax and is involving students in its creation. The silver lining to working with an open educational resource is that you don’t need to wait for it to be completed before you start using it. Doner has written a chapter mere weeks before students read it, and then goes back to update a chapter right after it is covered in class because students have asked questions.

“The Linguistic Analysis of Word and Sentence Structures” textbook meets several important needs. First, there is no single textbook that combines both the introductory study of morphology (the structure of words) and syntax (the structure of sentences), despite many universities combining the two into one course, including the University of Manitoba. Without Doner’s textbook, students would need to purchase two textbooks for one course.  Second, the textbook has a justice focus, including a section on decolonizing linguistics, and third, provides Canadian content, which is lacking from current morphology or syntax textbooks.

Doner’s digital resource is multimedia, including links to digital resources such as relevant comic strips and other fun materials, and interactive questions so students can get instant feedback on their understanding of the reading. “I can bring it up on my phone,” Doner says, “So I have showed it off at parties and at conferences, where I never expected to be talking about my textbook. People ask about it and I can immediately send them a link. Friends and family have a question about linguistics, and I can send them to the section of the textbook where it is explained and they don’t have to buy an expensive textbook.”

Students appreciate zero textbook cost

Students “definitely appreciate that it’s free,” Doner says about her open digital textbook. “You can see it in their body language when I announce that it will be a Zero Textbook Cost course on the first day of class.” A few students have volunteered to help with the textbook and many students have gone out of their way to complete the surveys about it and submit text errors.

UM Libraries essential resource in OER development

“I don’t think it’s possible to do this on my own, and UM thankfully has lots of support for those developing OERs. The OER working group at the library provides resources, technical support, professional development, and even funds. The Faculty of Arts has also provided a lot of funds through grants such as the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund and other initiatives. I also hope that other linguists with expertise in different languages will see value in my textbook and contribute to it.”

Doner continues, “A lot of linguistics instructors already develop resources and freely share them. I wish they knew how easy it was to slap a Creative Commons license on those materials to make it even easier for others to adapt and share them in a variety of ways!”

In a recent survey of UM faculty and instructors, conducted by Libraries, 36 percent of respondents reported assigning, adapting or creating OER for their classes. Furthermore, respondents said that of the open teaching materials they are using, half are replacing commercially available textbooks.

For more information on open access or open educational resources, see Open@UM.

Wednesday, March 6, 2024, 12 noon to 2:30 p.m.
Room 108, St John’s College, University of Manitoba
Details and registration
Pizza and coffee will be provided for registrants.
To attend in person, click the blue Begin Registration button in this link. Register by Zoom to attend virtually. 

Kayla, joining us via Zoom, will share Reflections of amiskwaciy: Indigenous protocols in open education, followed by an in-person panel of open educational resource (OER) users from the University of Manitoba who will discuss their experiences with OER. 

Kayla Lar-Son is a member of the Metis Nation of Alberta, with Ukrainian heritage, and is originally from Tofield Alberta. She holds a BA in Native Studies from the University of Alberta and an MLIS from the University of Alberta. She is the current Acting Head of the Xwi7xwa at the University of British Columbia. 

The panel of UM OER users:

• Julie Doner, Linguistics
• Xinli Wang, Mathematics
• Charlotte Moore, Education

Facilitator: Dr. Mark Meagher, Architecture 

6 R’s of Indigenous OER

6 R’s of Indigenous OER provides an Indigenous-focused framework for incorporating Indigenous Knowledge into openly-licensed teaching and learning materials. The “R’s” are influenced by the FAIR/CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Sovereignty, OCAP, and were originally adapted from the 4 R’s of First Nations and Higher Education and the UBC Longhouse Teachings. This talk discusses new developments in the 6 R’s based on the presenter’s own

This event is sponsored by the Advance Open Ed project.

Related activities

• Check out the previous event in the series: From Access to Justice: Realizing the Transformative Potential of Open Educational Practices, with Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani.
• Advance Open Ed provides financial and practical support along with educational opportunities to help the UM community create, adapt, and adopt open educational resources (OER). Apply today!