Open Educational Resources

Ontario Schools Tally OER Savings with New Tool

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 07/09/19

A new tool from the eCampusOntario Open Library measures student savings from open educational resources (OER) usage. Impact, as it's called, recently calculated that students have saved some $4.5 million (Canadian) in "mandatory textbook fees" from Ontario instructors who use OER to replace at least one of their assigned resources. That total represented input from almost 100 educators teaching 41,150 learners attending 626 course sections in 34 institutions.

The Open Library is a hub for OER in the province, currently providing instructors and students with access to 300 free and openly licensed educational resources. The library was initiated in 2017 in partnership with BCcampus, an organization that supports innovative teaching and learning practices at colleges and universities in British Columbia.

eCampusOntario is also involved in the Infrastructure for Open Publishing of Curriculum Resources Project, along with Toronto-based Ryerson University. This initiative has served as an extension of the Open Library, with the intention of creating and supporting an open source technology platform that's based on Pressbooks for institutional use.