eCampusOntario is an educational not-for-profit corporation that supports all pu
eCampusOntario is an educational not-for-profit corporation that supports all public institutions in the province of Ontario. They specialize specifically in learning technologies and finding digital solutions to common problems in higher education. The following case studies can be seen as representative of the experiences an OER program may have when working with a not-for-profit consortium to create OER. In addition, these case studies can be representative of Canadian institutions of various sizes, types, and modes of administration.
Structure
eCampusOntario is “a not-for-profit corporation […] funded by the Government of Ontario to be a centre of excellence in online and technology-enabled learning for all publicly-funded colleges and universities in Ontario.”[1] One such technology that the eCampusOntario corporation provides for its schools is access to a hosted Pressbooks network for open textbook production. The reach of eCampusOntario covers 21 Ontario universities and 24 colleges to total 45 institutions with Pressbooks access in all. Among these are Seneca College, University of Guelph, and Ryerson University.
Funding
Seneca College has begun to invest resources into an open educational resources program, but the program itself is in its beginning stages. Funding authors for open educational resources is a challenge that the school faces: “Seventy percent of our faculty are either part-time or partial load – they’re not full-time faculty,” Peters states.[2] Full-time faculty qualify for course releases, and part-time faculty do not, which adds an extra layer to the difficulty of finding willing authors on campus.
The University of Guelph OER program has funded two projects so far. The program paid $8,000, which was the cost of a course release, to have a faculty member create one of these projects.[3] Another project had funding from three different sources on campus. Verluis finds that funding efforts for the program can be a challenge because of changes in the government of Ontario; in the wake of a more conservative provincial government, Guelph sees finding a sustainable funding structure for their OER production program as a time-sensitive goal.
Ryerson has received grants through eCampusOntario in order to actualize projects, helping to establish credibility for the program as they push off the initiative. No centralized funding currently exists at Ryerson for OER, though individual departments may operate differently within the institution. The library also has a grant model coming into effect soon.[4]
Administration
The OER program at Seneca College has not yet produced an open text, though one faculty member is using the eCampusOntario Pressbooks network to adapt an already existing text. The Seneca OER Committee is a sub-committee of the Educational Technology Advisory Committee at Seneca College. Jennifer Peters, eLearning and Digital Literacies Librarian at Seneca, is a major part of the OER initiative on the campus and le