Kelly Pilato\u2019s journey to using open educational resources (OER) started with a single question.<\/p>\n
How could she improve the learning experience for her students?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat really is at the heart of everything I’m doing. I always think about how I can make things better for students,\u201d says the Assistant Professor of Health Sciences.<\/p>\n
For her first-year Introduction to Health Sciences course, that meant exploring OER as an alternative to the textbooks she\u2019d used in the past.<\/p>\n
OER are free teaching and learning materials that anyone can use or alter, allowing educators to expand their course materials while lowering costs for students, a priority for Pilato.<\/p>\n
With guidance from the Brock University Library and the Centre for Pedagogical Innovation, she has created a collection of free learning materials for her class this year. With funding from Brock\u2019s Open Educational Resources Grant Program<\/a>, she has hired two student research assistants to support the project.<\/p>\n Pilato\u2019s move to OER has allowed her to include more diverse resources, particularly related to Indigenous Peoples, and more Canadian content.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the past, I have felt disappointed by the way inequities in health are represented in some texts, sometimes as a callout box at the side or bottom of a page,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n As well as OER and peer-reviewed journal articles, students in her class are learning from podcasts, videos and other texts, an experience Pilato hopes will strengthen their ability to evaluate different sources of information in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cA big theme in the course are social determinants of health and relatedly, health literacy,\u201d she says. \u201cI try to connect for them that as future health professionals, it will be their job to help reduce inequities and help other people be able to make informed choices about their health based on reliable sources.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond supporting her own students\u2019 learning, Pilato\u2019s project will also be available for use by other educators in the future. The resources she has gathered with her research assistants will be published as a complete OER collection using Pressbooks later this year. The collection will be available through the eCampusOntario Open Library<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe more we share our best practices and what we’re doing, the more we can learn from one another,\u201d Pilato says. \u201cI deeply believe education is a right, and everybody should have access to education. It really aligns with my own values that we’re going to have this open educational resource out there that other people will be able to access and build on.\u201d<\/p>\n Pilato and Professor of Educational Studies Ruth McQuirter<\/a> are the most recent OER Grant recipients. They join a growing list<\/a> of 32 faculty, instructors and lab supervisors from across the University to receive funding since the program was launched in 2023.<\/p>\n To date, OER Grant-funded projects<\/a> have helped nearly\u00a04,500 students save a cumulative total of $566,000<\/a>\u00a0on course materials.<\/p>\n