Open Education Week 2025
USask celebrates Open Education (OE) Week March 3 – 7, 2025.
Open education is the movement toward making educational practices and resources open to everyone.
The University Library is collaborating with the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness (GMCTE) in celebrating Open Education (OE) Week March 3 – 7, 2025.
There are a variety of online sessions offered from finding Open Educational Resources for your course to using Creative Commons licenses. And there is an in-person Open House kickoff event with popcorn and button maker activities on Monday March 3 in Murray Library Room 145 from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm to start the week!
See the full schedule of events and register.
Open and accessible learning
Open education has implications for how we think about the role of education in society. It recognizes the importance of education as a public good, and seeks to make education more equitable, regardless of background, or financial situation.
For open education advocates such as SPARC, a non-profit organization, education is a fundamental right, and access should not be restricted to only those who can afford it and should be free from constraints such as geographic location, income, and prior educational attainment.
There are several initiatives contributing to the promotion of open education. The most prominent are Open Educational Resources (OER) – free, openly licensed, and accessible educational materials for teaching and learning. Along with OERs, advocates promote the use of technology to make education more accessible. By using open online learning platforms and tools, learners can access courses and educational content from anywhere, at any time. Finally, advocates of Open Education also encourage educational systems to make research and scholarship – including research data where appropriate – open and publicly available.
A core benefit of OER is the ability for educators to freely adopt and/or adapt open resources allowing them to modify and create content for their own course and context. This not only addresses textbook affordability challenges for students, but it also enhances the learning experience, especially where there is opportunity for student engagement as co-creators and contributors.
Open Educational Resources at USask
A catalogue of USask produced textbooks can also be found through the USask Open Academic Publishing Platform.
Some titles from the catalogue include:
- Northern and Indigenous Health and Healthcare – included as one of the top five Open Educational Resources from Pressbooks
Other free online OERs can be found using the library’s Open Textbooks & OERS guide and directories such the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) can be valuable resources for locating course material.
The University Library is committed to supporting and advocating for Open Scholarship (including research outputs, data, and education) and hosts HARVEST – USask’s repository for research, scholarship, and artistic work. HARVEST now has a collection for Open Educational Resources where members of the university community can deposit their OER and an Upload Service where library staff deposit research outputs on behalf of USask authors. To get assistance email HARVEST@library.usask.ca.
Instructors interested in learning more about Open Education Practices (OEP) at USask and looking to find additional supports can get help through the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning.