Building inroads to accessible, high-quality online digital education materials is critical to McMaster’s current shift to online learning. We congratulate the first recipients of the OER Grant Program – a three-year pilot supported jointly by the Office of the Provost, McMaster University Libraries and The MacPherson Institute.

The following faculty members, and their corresponding projects, will be supported as they build and integrate their OER projects into their teaching in the coming year:

Home. It’s a word that’s never carried more meaning.

In this time of global pandemic, physical distancing has shifted the patterns of our everyday lives, changing both our relationship to home and how we perceive the world beyond our front doors.

This article is part of a series of stories posted on the McMaster Daily News that explores support services for students at McMaster. These supports align with the university’s new Archway program, which provides a personal support program for incoming first-year students

In 1934, the first students to begin their studies at McMaster’s new Hamilton campus celebrated their convocation.

Four years earlier, McMaster had moved to Hamilton from its original campus on Bloor Street in Toronto after Hamilton citizens raised funds to relocate the university to Westdale.

A small class by today’s standards – made up of 71 women and 104 men – their historic convocation was captured on film, an unusual occurrence in 1934 and a sign of the importance of the occasion.

On March 19, 1917, Gordon William Parkinson, a private in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces, wrote home to his older brother Bob.

Nineteen-year old Parkinson, who was stationed in England at the time, recounted stories of daily life in camp; the warming weather, the chores, the exploits of fellow servicemen. He also described a scene which, in light of the current pandemic, might feel oddly familiar to many Canadians.

At a time when learning is shifting online, a new grant program is making it easier for instructors to create and integrate free, high-quality online textbooks and other digital educational materials into their teaching.

The Open Educational Resources (OER) Grant Program, a three-year pilot supported jointly by the Office of the Provost, McMaster University Libraries and The MacPherson Institute, will provide successful applicants with funding to create new open textbooks, or customize existing open textbooks.

The University Library, like many academic libraries around the world, is experiencing a disruption in service that has severely limited access to our physical collections. As part of our efforts to provide the materials that you need for your research and study, the University Library is now participating in the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS) program.

Over the last few weeks, the University Library has received several inquiries from instructors regarding the breadth of resources available to support remote teaching in spring and summer 2020.  I am pleased to note that, while our physical facilities remain closed, instructors continue to have access to the Library’s rich course content, robust technological tools and expert assistance – albeit delivered in sometimes new ways.  We encourage you to reach out to us with any specific questions or needs you may have – we are here to help in any way we can and will work with you