The Council of Atlantic Academic Libraries (CAAL-CBPA) is excited to share news of a provincial investment into open educational resources (OER).
The four Atlantic provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island are working together through the Council of Atlantic Ministers of Education and Training (CAMET) to invest in a 3-year pilot program with AtlanticOER. The funding from the pilot program will be used to support efforts to increase the creation, adoption, and adaptation of OER at publicly funded post-secondary institutions across the Atlantic Region.
AtlanticOER is an OER-focused service founded by CAAL-CBPA. It supports the hosting and creation of OER by educators and students in the Atlantic provinces. AtlanticOER has supported the creation of 42 books, impacted over 26,000 students, and had saved students $1,001,437.
With this new funding, the service will be expanding to include:
- Upgrades to publishing infrastructure to better assist with the OER creation process;
- The expansion of the AtlanticOER Development Grant Program to increase the financial support that is provided to educators in the Atlantic region; and
- The development of a Peer Review program to facilitate high quality reviews for educational materials that are created.
This investment is the result of years of advocacy. CAAL-CBPA would like to thank Students Nova Scotia, the New Brunswick Student Alliance, the University of Prince Edward Island’s Student Union, the Memorial University Student Union, past and present members of the CAAL-CBPA OER Committee, past members of the Open Textbooks Survey Working Group, past members of the Open Textbooks Roadmap Working Group, and past members of the OER Repository Implementation Working Group for their hard work and dedication. All of these individuals have been strong advocates for OER and have made this investment possible.