How can instructors create their own interactive content for online courses? How can using open platforms increase equity and inclusion in teaching? Where can instructors find high-quality, openly licensed educational materials?

Join McMaster University Library and the MacPherson Institute for virtual sessions on these topics and more in celebration of International Open Access Week.

An annual global event, Open Access Week (Oct. 25-31) celebrates advances in Open Access, Open Data and Open Education – all part of a worldwide movement to make scholarly publications, data, and educational resources available, free of legal, financial or technical barriers for the benefit of researchers, students, and society as a whole.

Learn more about Open Access initiatives at McMaster
Learn more about Open Educational Resources (OER)

Schedule of Events

Mark Up the Margins at Mac: Implementing Annotation in your Course with Hypothes.is 
Monday, Oct. 25, 2021 | 10:30-11:30 a.m.

Jeremy Dean, VP education, Hypothesis, will discuss how collaborative annotation with Hypothesis can be used to make student reading visible, active, and social. In addition to sharing pedagogical best practices for collaborative annotation, Jeremy will demonstrate how Hypothesis can be used with course readings in Avenue to Learn. After presenting, Jeremy will lead participants in a discussion about how Hypothesis collaborative annotation can be used in their specific disciplines and with their specific teaching and learning objectives. Participants can expect to come away from this session with a clear idea about how they can start incorporating collaborative annotation into their courses to improve student success.

Presenter: Jeremy Dean, VP education, Hypothesis

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Introduction to Creating Interactive Content with H5P 
Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021 | 3-4 p.m.

Interested in learning about how to use H5P to create an OER for your course? This hands-on introduction workshop will introduce you to H5P, an interactive content creation platform, where you can create interactive content using content type templates (e.g., course presentations, practice questions, historical timelines, scenario branching exercises, etc.) and collaborate with other instructors and students. Anyone with an institutional email at McMaster (instructors, staff, students, etc.) can create an H5P login for free. Here is the link to register for an account: eCampusOntario H5P Studio.

Presenter: Jennifer Williams, educational development fellow, MacPherson Institute

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OER Showcase: Finding, Using and Creating Open Educational Resources for your Teaching and Learning 
Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021 | 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

Education is currently facing a tremendous challenge with the shift of teaching and learning to hybrid formats. Tapping into Open Educational Resources (OER) is an excellent path forward for finding, creating and customizing openly licensed materials for your teaching and learning. OER are educational materials (including textbooks, modules, streaming media, simulations, images and much more) that can be accessible, adaptable, time-saving and engaging alternatives to commercially published textbooks or having to create learning materials from scratch. Participants will be introduced to a variety of sources and collections that exist for OER, including McMaster’s own OER By Discipline Guide.

We’ll also hear from our 2020-2021 OER Grantees as they update us on their completed projects. Learn about the projects (one Adaptation and two Creation), hear about the grantees’ experiences with exploring new teaching approaches using OER, and hear about students’ experiences with contributing to course content. There will be time for questions and discussion after the presentations. Learn more about the OER Grant which will be offered again in Spring 2022.

Presenters:

• Zhen He, assistant professor, Department of Economics
• Joanne Kehoe, lead educational developer, digital pedagogy, MacPherson Institute
• Caitlin Mullarkey and Felicia Vulcu, assistant professors, Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences
• Alex Peace, assistant professor, School of Earth, Environment & Society

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OER Lightning Round: Teaching in the Open at McMaster 
Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021 | 1:30-2:30 p.m.

Interested in how your colleagues are planning to incorporate open education into their teaching? Hear from the 2021-2022 OER grantees as they share short presentations on their awarded projects. Discover the amazing open projects planned, hear about the grantees' experiences so far, and learn about their next steps and goals. The aim of this session is to provide ideas for possible OER projects of your own. There will be time for Q&A and discussion after the presentations. Find out more about the OER Grant which will be offered again in Spring 2022.

Presenters:

• Konstantinos Apostolou and Amin Rajabzadeh, assistant professors, W Booth School of Engineering Practice and Technology
  Open Content Creation: Introduction to Mass Balances
• Mirna Carranza, professor, School of Social Work
  Open Content Creation: The Colonial Mirror: Newcomer Families as Civic Bodies
• David Feinberg, associate professor, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour 
  Open Content Creation: Python for Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour
• Chad Harvey, associate professor, School of Interdisciplinary Science 
  Open Content Adaptation: Adaptation of Biology 2e (OpenStax)
• Ali Hashemi, assistant professor, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour
  Open Content Creation: Revisiting the History of Psychology
• Anne Holbrook, professor, Department of Medicine
  Open Content Adaptation: Adaptation of the National Prescribing Curriculum (NPC) of Australia
• Miroslav Lovric, associate professor, Department of Mathematics & Statistics
  Open Content Creation: 99 Numbers: Mathematics of Everyday Life
• Antonio Paez, professor, School of Earth, Environment & Society
  Open Content Creation: Spatial Statistics

REGISTER
 

Educational Resources Surveys

The McMaster Students Union is conducting two fall surveys on Educational Resources. Please consider completing the five-minute surveys. 
Instructor survey: https://bit.ly/3nMqEPv
Student survey: https://bit.ly/3lApmUQ

For more information about Open Access Week or OER, contact Olga Perkovic, open education and scholarship librarian.