Mar 16, 2021

Vancouver, BC – Two Langara College instructors, Mirabelle Tinio and Rochelle Grayson, have each been awarded grants of $10,000 by BCcampus. BCcampus awarded six open educational resources (OER) development grants as part of the Open Homework Systems (OHS) project. The grants will be used to add H5P interactive formative assessment activities to six Pressbooks open textbooks in the B.C. Open Textbook Collection.

Tinio’s project, Le français interactif, aims to create H5P learning objects for the French language open textbook Le français interactif, originally developed by the Department of French and Italian at the University of Texas at Austin in 2004. Other project participating institutions include the University of British Columbia, and the University of the Fraser Valley.

“As an open resource, this textbook gave me the freedom and flexibility I wanted to support and guide student learning, but it was missing an interactive component, so the option of integrating H5P objects to ameliorate the textbook is what motivated me for the project,” said instructor Tinio.

Grayson’s project, Foundations in Digital Marketing, will enhance a digital marketing open textbook currently in development with H5P activities. Since digital marketing is an ever-changing and evolving industry, the openly licensed H5P materials can easily be updated and adapted to reflect the latest trends and developments in the industry.

“Developing free educational resources for students reduces barriers to access. We endeavour to create H5P content that is accessible to all learners by applying Universal Design for Learning principles,” added Tinio. “In addition, by integrating student voices, this project incorporates open pedagogical practices, giving students opportunities to co-construct knowledge and showcase their learning, while updating and building a body of resources that reflect their perspectives. Not only will students be active learners, they will also be empowered as creators of knowledge.”

The OER grants total $60,000 for six collaborative projects that represent seven post-secondary institutions in B.C. The grants will be used to develop interactive activities for Pressbooks open textbooks in the areas of French language, technical writing, marketing, physical geology, and social psychology.

“As with our first round of funding in 2020, we had a tremendous response to our call for proposals,” said BCcampus open education project manager Clint Lalonde. “It is obvious from the response that interest in H5P as a tool to support student practice and self-assessment has taken off in B.C.”

About H5P
H5P is a tool for creating over 40 different types of interactive learning activities. H5P integrates with numerous platforms, including all major learning management systems used within the B.C. post-secondary system and Pressbooks, the open textbook authoring platform supported by BCcampus. All H5P interactions created for these textbooks will be released with Creative Commons licenses, which allow other educators to freely copy, reuse, and modify the interactions to fit their own pedagogical contexts, and will be contributed to the forthcoming H5P OER repository. 

Additional background
Since 2012, the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training has funded B.C. open education initiatives and tasked BCcampus with managing them. BCcampus’s goal is to provide flexible and affordable access to post-secondary learning resources in B.C. by making available openly licensed textbooks that align with the most highly enrolled first- and second-year undergraduate subject areas as well as with select skills training and trades subject areas.
A key component of the next phase of open education work for BCcampus is to enhance the existing open textbook collection through the development of complementary OHS and accompanying formative assessment questions that provide students the opportunity to reinforce and practice new knowledge. The OER development grant is a key strategy in meeting the goals of the OHS project.

About Langara College
Located in beautiful Vancouver, B.C., Canada, snəw̓eyəɬ leləm̓ Langara College provides University, Career, and Continuing Studies education to more than 23,000 students annually. With more than 1,700 courses and 130 programs, Langara’s expansive academic breadth and depth allows students of all ages, backgrounds, and life stages to choose their own educational path. Langara is also known as snəw̓eyəɬ leləm 'house of teachings', a name given to it by Musqueam, on whose unceded traditional territory the College is located.

Learn more.
Mark Dawson
Manager, Public Affairs
Langara College
mdawson@langara.ca