How open education opportunities are shaping student learning globally

Assistant Professor of Health Sciences Michelle Vine (left) and Associate Professor of Chemistry Divya Kaur Matta are among Brock's first faculty members to receive a United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Faculty Fellowship.

Brock's efforts to advance open educational resources (OER) and practices (OEP) are paying off.

Since the summer of 2023, the University has awarded $61,000 in grants for 28 faculty-led OER and OEP projects. Those initiatives have since saved more than 13000 students across campus $1.5 million in resource and textbook costs.

"With OER adoptions in every Faculty, Brock's growing OER grant program is a spectacular example of how a strong partnership between the University and the Brock University Students' Union can empower faculty innovation while reducing financial barriers so that more students can fully participate in their learning and feel that they belong," says Rajiv.

But the benefits of OER and OEP go far beyond lowering costs in classrooms.

For Assistant Professor of Health Sciences Michelle Vine, who previously used an OER grant to replace the textbook in one of her classes, these approaches expand learning opportunities for students to apply their learning outside the classroom and to different fields of study.

"Using OER and OEP, we can develop nimble course content that keeps up with what's happening in our fields and helps students build skills they're going to need in their careers," she says.

Vine and Associate Professor of Chemistry Divya Kaur Matta spent the summer developing cross-disciplinary OEP assignments through the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) Open Pedagogy Faculty Fellowship.

The pair are part of Brock's first cohort of UN SDG Open Pedagogy Fellows. The international initiative, which is not officially connected with the United Nations, invites partners faculty members from different institutions and disciplines to explore specific SDGs with their students using open pedagogy, a teaching approach that centres students as creators of information that can impact communities.

Vine's Master of Public Health students will use environmental data collected by physics students at Montgomery College in the U.S. to develop policy papers addressing the impact of noise pollution on human well-being.

As well as building their data analysis skills and collaboration skills, Vine says she believes the experience will help students build confidence in their ability to work with different professionals to create solutions for community challenges.

"To me, this project is about moving public health from theory into practice with a really tangible outcome," she says. "It's almost an experiential learning opportunity because they're getting that taste of what it will be like to work as public health practitioners."

Helping students use chemistry to address issues that matter beyond the classroom -- such as environmental sustainability and access to clean water -- is central to Kaur Matta's work as an educator.

"My goal is to make chemistry accessible and to show students they can use it to contribute to society, even if they're still learning," said Kaur Matta, who is using the fellowship to expand her use of open pedagogy in chemistry.

She has partnered with an English professor from Montgomery College on an interdisciplinary microplastics assignments designed to help students connect fundamental chemistry concepts with evidence evaluation and effective scientific communication.

Her undergraduate Introductory Chemistry students will research microplastics, evaluate scientific evidence and develop an educational resource for the general public.

"For me, using open pedagogy or open educational resources doesn't simply mean making materials free. It's also broadening who gets to participate in science, whose perspectives are valued and whether students see chemistry as something they can use to understand and engage with the world around them."

Students in Kaur Matta and Vine's classes will have their final projects published on the UN SDG Fellowship website.

Both Kaur Matta and Vine plan to continue using OER and OEP in their classes.

Faculty members looking to adopt open resources in the classroom or adapt them for use at Brock can apply for the next round of Brock OER grants until Wednesday, Sept. 30. Also available is an OEP grant designed to support the use of open pedagogy in Brock courses.

For more information on the University's OER and OEP grants, contact [email protected] or visit the Brock Library's website.