Open educational resources

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

• Allowing faculty to adapt teaching materials to match the content of their courses. 
• Providing students the opportunity to create, collaborate, and share their learning. 
• Lowering the cost of education making it more accessible and affordable for all. 

Create, adapt and/or adopt an open educational resource

The Libraries provides funding for UM faculty, instructors and librarians to create, adapt and/or adopt an open educational resource. 

Grant value: $10,000 maximum

Current deadline: August 15, 2025 for 2025-2026. 

UM OER project grant application and guidelines (Word)

UM OER Budget Template (Excel)

Examples

• Create a set of slide decks, interactive activities, or other supplemental content to be used in teaching with an OER textbook at UM in the instructor’s own courses.
• Adapt a relevant OER to make it a better fit for teaching in the instructor’s own courses.
• Create a new module or set of modules (text-based, video, or otherwise) to use in teaching in UM courses.
• Edit and publish an Open Pedagogy project created with UM students.

UM Libraries provides practical help to the UM community to create, adapt and adopt open educational resources and supports platforms for hosting open publications.

For further support with OER on campus:

• Contact your subject librarian for help in identifying and evaluating OER in your discipline. 
• Direct teaching questions to the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning.
• For copyright and licensing questions, review the UM Creative Commons guide or contact the Copyright Office. 

Read about evaluating OERs.

^{Adapted from Pressbooks (CC BY)}

As part of the University of Manitoba, you have access to the Pressbooks Authoring & Editing Platform, through Campus Manitoba’s Pressbooks network.

Using the Pressbooks Authoring & Editing Platform, you can  

• adapt existing OER for your classrooms;
• create new material from scratch;
• enrich content with accessible math notation, videos, audio, web annotation, and H5P interactive elements like quizzes and activities.

To start creating, visit the Campus Manitoba Pressbooks network, choose Sign In, Institutional Login, and then University of Manitoba. From here you can use your U of M login to access Pressbooks.

For more technical guidance, visit the Pressbooks User Guide and the Pressbooks FAQ. You can also look through the Pressbooks Directory to find examples. A recorded workshop from UM Libraries is also available.

Pressbooks also holds live training sessions. Visit the PressbooksEDU Training Schedule and register to participate.

Integrate Pressbooks content into UM Learn

Pressbooks Results is a way to integrate your Pressbooks chapters into your UM Learn course, so that students can interact with the content without ever leaving UM Learn. You can even incorporate results from H5P activities in Pressbooks into your gradebook. 

You can only use this feature with your own books in Pressbooks; to use it with someone else’s book, clone the book to your own account first.

Using Pressbooks Results

1. If you have included H5P activities which you want to be graded, navigate to edit the chapter in which they appear. Scroll down to below the text editing box, where you’ll find a section called LMS Grade Reporting. Check the box beside the activities you want graded. 
2. In UM Learn, navigate to the module in Content where you’d like the chapter to be. Click Existing Activities, and choose Pressbooks Content Selector. You should be taken to a list of your books, including chapters in Pressbooks. Check the box to choose the section of interest, then scroll down and choose Select Content. Your Pressbooks content is now added! 
3. If you are using the grading feature for your H5P activities, navigate to the Enter Grades page, under the Assessment menu. Here you can edit the point value of the activities.

More detailed instructions from Pressbooks.

Related tutorials from Pressbooks

• Cloning a book
• Using H5P content in Pressbooks
• Pressbooks User Guide
   

• Review an open textbook and receive an honorarium in recognition of your work.
• If you have used an open textbook, fill out the adoption form to improve the quality of OER statistics in Manitoba.
• Check out Campus Manitoba, Manitoba's hub for supporting online learning.

Creating/adapting OERs:

• OS Toolkit: Evaluating OERs
• OS Toolkit: Open Pedagogy
• BCcampus - Adaptation Guide
• Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know

Getting started with Pressbooks:

• Open Education Self-Publishing Guide
• Learning Portal guide to Collaborating on OERs
• Open Author Module Builder  
• OER Authoring Tools  
• PressBooks  
• PubPub  
• MERLOT Content Builder  
• OER and Accessibility Guide  
• Inclusive Learning Design Handbook 

For assistance with open educational resources, funding or support, contact us.