Advance Open Ed

The Advance Open Ed was a two-year initiative (2023-2025) supported by UM's strategic funding to build capacity and awareness of open educational resources (OER) at the University of Manitoba.  The project provided financial and practical support along with educational opportunities to help the UM community create, adapt, and adopt OER.

UM Libraries provides ongoing support for the development of OER.

Learn more about OER support.

Advance Open Ed highlights

  • $90,000

    Support for open publishing

  • 21

    OER projects

  • $30,000

    Value for open publishing

  • 7,300

    Students impacted/yr

  • 2

    Open access books

  • 3

    OER Speaker Series events

About OER

The University of Manitoba is committed to facilitating student learning and enhancing the student experience. One avenue to achieve this mission is by making education affordable and accessible with OER.

What are open educational resources (OER)?

OER are teaching materials that have an open-copyright license that allow them to be created, adapted, adopted and shared by instructors and students at no cost.

Advantages of OER

While the cost of course materials can be a barrier to accessing courses for some students, OER provide advantages for both students and instructors:

  • Allows educators to create/adapt/adopt teaching materials to match the content of their courses.
  • Lowers the cost of education, making it more accessible and affordable for all.
  • Provides students the opportunity to create, collaborate, and share their learning.

Learn more about OER from UM Libraries

Grant recipients

  • Enhancing Learning through Educational Videos - Jackie Elliott, Athletic Therapy.
  • Endoscopy Curriculum - Eric Hyun, Surgery.
  • Curriculum for Teaching Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine - Katherine Kearns, Family Medicine; Meghan Azad, Pediatrics and Child Health; Joanne Hamilton, Office of Innovation and Scholarship in Medical Education; and Christina Raimondi, Family Medicine. 
  • EmFATically Inclusive: Identifying and Redressing Anti-Fat Stigma in Medical Education - Deborah McPhail, Community Health Sciences; Joanne Hamilton, Office of Innovation and Scholarship in Medical Education; Chelsea Jalloh, Office of Innovation and Scholarship in Medical Education; and Valerie Williams, Office of Equity, Access and Participation. 
  • Teaching with Images: An AI Resource for Understanding Urban Animals - Mark Meagher, Environmental Design. 
  • Telling the Stories of Indigenous Business Leaders in Canada - Katherine Davis, Asper School of Business. 
  • Management: Financial, Social, and Ecological Well-Being - Bruno Dyck, Asper School of Business.  View publication.
  • The Linguistic Analysis of Word and Sentence Structures - Julie Doner, Linguistics. View publication.
  • Programming for Psychologists: Online Data Collection with jsPsych - Nick Brosowsky, Psychology.
  • Active Learning Activities Workbook for Programming II Course - Celine Latulipe, Computer Science. View publication.
  • Textbook for Elementary Discrete Mathematics - Karen Gunderson, Michelle Davidson, and Robert Craigen, Mathematics. 
  • Developing OERs addressing weight stigma for rehabilitation education programs - Patricia Thille, Rehabilitation Sciences.
  • Religion and Sexuality - Justin Jaron Lewis, Religion.
  • Development of an OER Laboratory Manual for GEOL 1340 The Dynamic Earth - Ricardo Silva, Earth Sciences.
  • Empowering Patient and Public Partners: Open Educational Resource for Meaningful Research Participation - Megan Delisle, Department of Surgery
  • You Know, We Could Test That: A Laboratory Guidebook, Neuroscience Edition - Renée Douville, Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics
  • Waters: Human and more than human life in the Lake Winnipeg Watershed - Adele Perry, Centre for Human Rights Research
  • Transforming Education: Anishinaabe Knowledges, Accessibility, and Universal Design for Learning - Iwona Gniadek and Micheline Hughes, Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning
  • Digitization of Geological Sciences Slide Collection - Janna Wilson, Environment and Geography.
  • Anti-Racist Social Work in Canada: Pilot Development of Case Studies from Manitoba - Monica Batac, Social Work.
  • Introduction to Collaborative Team-Based Care Module - Dr. Moni Fricke, Office of Interprofessional Collaboration, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences.

Learning opportunities

Past events

  • Open Educational Resources, Part 1

    Originally held Wednesday, February 14, 2024 by facilitators Janice Winkler and Iwona Gniadek

    The term open educational resources (OER) describes a wide range of materials in teaching and learning that are available for public use with an open license or in the public domain. In this workshop, participants will learned why OER are valuable, how to locate them, how to evaluate them using a rubric, and how to adapt and create them.

  • Open Educational Resources, Part 2

    This session was held Wednesday, March 20, 2024 by facilitators Janice Winkler and Iwona Gniadek.

    In this workshop, participants learned about the benefits of teaching with OER, and qualities that make OER valuable pedagogically. Considerations for adopting, adapting, and creating OER, such as copyright and selecting publishing tools, will be discussed. The workshop built on content presented in The Centre workshop “Open Educational Resources, Part 1.