Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Open Educational Resources Grants

Open Educational Resources Grants / Funded projects

Funded projects (2016-2019)

NOTE: This SFU Open Educational Resources (OER) Grants program ran from 2016-2019, and has now ended.

Please see the website for the new SFU Open Education Grants Program Pilot (Spring 2022) for information about current funding and support for open education projects on campus: https://www.sfu.ca/istld/faculty/grant-programs/oeg.html

In total, this OER Grants program distributed ten rounds of funding (in February, June and October 2016, February, July and November 2017, June and October 2018, May 2019, and November 2019). Grant recipients and projects from all ten rounds rounds are listed below.

Round 10 |  November 2019

  • Rachel Fouladi, associate professor, Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
  • Taco Niet, assistant professor of professional practice, School of Sustainable Energy Engineering, Faculty of Applied Sciences
  • Kate Tairyan, senior lecturer, Faculty of Health Sciences

Round 9 |  May 2019

  • Juan Pablo Alperin, assistant professor, Master of Publishing Program, Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology
  • Shivanand Balram, senior lecturer, Department of Geography, Faculty of Environment
  • Kathleen Fitzpatrick, senior lecturer, Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science; and Kevin Lam, senior lecturer, Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science
  • Andrew Perkins, lecturer, Department of Geography, Faculty of Environment
 

Round 8 |  October 2018

  • Robin Brayne, associate professor, Faculty of Education 
    This project will support the curation of diverse online resources tailored for the academic needs of students enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Education. This curation process will seek to align relevant pedagogical materials with course learning objectives within the course management system. More broadly, this project aims to enhance the existing infrastructure of online course development expertise at SFU by leveraging the expertise of SFU instructional designers, specialists in media and copyright, as well as teaching faculty.

  • Susan Clements-Vivian, senior lecturer, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology 
    This project will see the creation of primer activities for students and faculty that harness the power of drawing and mark-marking as catalysts for visual thinking. Existing OER material relating to sketching and graphic design will be evaluated and adapted as part of this project, with the end goal of promoting thinking through drawing. Although designed primarily for IAT 202 students, this project’s visual thinking primer activity has relevance to a broad range of courses and disciplines and will be made openly available online. This project will see the creation of primer activities for students and faculty that harness the power of drawing and mark-marking as catalysts for visual thinking. Existing OER material relating to sketching and graphic design will be evaluated and adapted as part of this project, with the end goal of promoting thinking through drawing. Although designed primarily for IAT 202 students, this project’s visual thinking primer activity has relevance to a broad range of courses and disciplines and will be made openly available online.

  • Nicolas Fillion, assistant professor, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences 
    This project will see the creation of new course materials that address the skill set gaps of Philosophy and Cognitive Science students in the area of interpreting and developing mathematical proofs. To accomplish this, previously developed course notes will be used as the foundation for a single, freely-available course resource that will support students as they proficiency in the formal logic underlying proofs. Although the completed course material will be of primary use for PHIL 310 and 315 (COGS 300) students at SFU, the material will be made (after a revision process) available via open access publication to a wider audience.

  • Ron Roesch, professor, Department of Psychology, and director, Mental Health, Law, & Policy Institute, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences 
    This project will update and expand an existing print Psychology textbook in order to create an online course resource that incorporates new developments in psychology and law, along with a variety of multimedia supplementary material. Because the original textbook authors regaining the intellectual property rights from the textbook publisher, and because the resource will be maintained electronically, this text can be dynamically tailored to the needs of PSYC 268 students at SFU for years to come. In addition, this project is committed to making these materials more widely available, both within SFU and in a broader post-secondary context.

  • John Stockie, professor, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science; and Petra Menz, senior lecturer, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science 
    This project involves the creation of a databank of clicker questions that will supplement the instruction of an upper-level undergraduate mathematics course at SFU. These questions can be posed to students throughout lectures, facilitating student engagement and helping to identify gaps in knowledge and proficiency. This project fills a need for upper-level undergraduate mathematics clicker question at SFU, and after they are trialed with MACM 316 students, the questions will be made publicly available.

  • JF Williams, professor, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science; and Randall Pyke, lecturer, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science 
    This project involves the creation course notes, practice problems, and electronic math visualizations for students taking MATH 130 as part of the Interactive Arts Program (IAT) at SFU. This project aims to build on course materials created by previous OER projects, with revisions made to reflect the specific needs of the IAT program. Visual mathematics demonstrations will also be created using the software tools Processing and Geogebra. Materials relating to this project will be made available via SFU Summit (or other platforms where applicable) in order to ensure the broadest possible accessibility of these materials.

Round 7 | June 2018

  • Sean Blenkinsop, professor, Faculty of Education; with Mark Fettes, associate professor, Faculty of Education; and Laura Piersol, faculty associate, Faculty of Education 
    This project aims to cultivate the growth of nature-based, place-based, outdoor, and experiential learning by developing an open, online, and interactive platform. In addition to facilitating the storage and retrieval of learning resources, this platform strives to promote critical engagement by serving as a nexus of discussion and resource sharing. Because early resource contributions to this platform will largely consist of course materials from previous nature-based experiential learning programs, this site will initially be of primary interest to current and future students of these courses. However, thanks to a commitment to incorporate the research output from the project team and the broader discipline, this collection endeavours to facilitate conversation between students, educators, and scholars worldwide.

  • Petra Menz, senior lecturer, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science; and Nicola Mulberry, graduate student, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science. 
    This project will see the development of course notes, instructional videos and a solution manual that will supplement other course material created for MATH 157 and 158 classes. A unique advantage of these newly created materials is the close alignment between lecture notes and student notes, which facilitates not only the learning of curricular content, but also valuable note-taking and study skills. Special attention will be made during the creation of instructional videos and course notes to ensure the highest quality of mathematics visuals possible. 

  • Leith Davis, professor, Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences 
    This project aims to expand the scope and accessibility of the Eighteenth-century Media Online (EMO) site, which was originally designed to house printed ephemera and non-print media produced from 1688 to 1815. Building on the work from a previous OER Grant, this new project will make the EMO database relevant to a larger audience by increasing the range of included materials and by promoting the site via social media. In addition, the project will see the development of video tutorials designed to make the material submission process as straightforward and accessible as possible.

Round 6 | November 2017

  • Gretchen Ferguson, director, Sustainable Development Program, and research associate, Centre for Sustainable Development, Faculty of Environment, and Mark Roseland, professor, Centre for Sustainable Development, Resource and Environmental Management, Faculty of Environment | Research assistant: Sophie Dodd
    Following two successful OER Grant–funded projects, we will now update SD 481 Sustainable Communities Leadership Lab, an important course of the Sustainable Development Program. We aim to seek out open textbooks, educational talks and other videos, parts of related MOOCs, and other resources that will provide the students with theoretical background and real-world case studies on this course’s topics. We will evaluate the suitability of the identified resources using criteria from our previous projects, and then we will curate and adapt them to the course modules and assignments. We also plan to update our existing database with the OER on social enterprise as well as matching instructor guides and worksheets.

Round 5 | July 2017

  • Heesoon Bai, professor, Faculty of Education, Laurie Anderson, adjunct professor, Faculty of Education, and Charles Scott, adjunct professor, Faculty of Education
    Our Contemplative Inquiry (under Curriculum and Instruction MEd) master of education program introduces and cultivates a relatively new field of education that seeks to “infuse” the traditional subject areas of knowledge and skills acquisition in education with contemplative modalities. Our plan for the OER Grant is to (a) philosophically reframe curriculum and pedagogy in the terms of the contemplative; and (2) curate curriculum and research materials for our explicit pedagogical needs. The OER Grant will serve to allow us to create a digital repository for the collective work we do.

  • Malgorzata Dubiel, senior lecturer, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science | Research assistant: Justine Gauthier
    FAN X99-4 is a non-traditional course, focusing on problem solving and critical thinking in addition to math skills. Since a textbook suitable for our needs does not exist, I decided to write one, combining the problems we have been using and adding new ones, and adding theory and skills practice exercises. The text, with its instructor resource guide, has been available (free) to students through Canvas for the last three years, and is at the stage to be updated and made an open educational resource.

  • Michael Filimowicz, senior lecturer, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology | Research assistant: Kadeer Ayinuerguli
    DESIGN + MEDIA + SPACE: This project aims to develop a comprehensive resource for interactive audiovisual media in expanded contexts. The resource will be used in IAT 443 Interactive Video and will also be a reference for other SIAT courses which might find spatial and design issues in connection to media of interest. The primary outcome is to consolidate the needed resources (such as relevant examples, downloadable code files, media and project files, blueprints of projects, etc.) which students can use to develop their own projects for interactive audiovisual media as an open educational resource.     

Round 4 | February 2017

  • Leith Davis, professor, Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Research assistant: Brian Shannon
    Leith Davis’s project supports the construction of the Database of Online Resources on the Media of the Long Enlightenment (DORMLE). DORMLE will help scholars and instructors locate and select online materials on non-print media and printed ephemera from 1688 to 1815, as well as share their best practices for teaching using these resources. While designed with students in a third-year eighteenth-century English literature course in mind, the resource will be publicly available and accessible to scholars, instructors and students at all levels and in all disciplines.
  • Andre Gerolymatos, director and professor, Hellenic Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Research assistant: Rylee Sear and Lauren Gilbert
    Andre Gerolymatos’s project aims to create an online resource with thematic modules that will house difficult-to-access primary sources, interactive maps, study guides, audiovisual recordings, and bibliographies. Presently, students engage with these topics through traditional texts and lectures; however, an online component will enhance their learning experience by offering them sophisticated tools to interact with the material, including self-assessment tools such as study guides and interactive maps and timelines, as well as video tutorials.
  • Lannie Kanevsky, associate professor, Faculty of Education | Research assistant: Zahra Rajan
    Lannie Kanevsky’s project will stabilize and enhance the functionality of two web-based tools that students in EDUC 428 (who are teachers) learn to use for planning curriculum. The first instrument, The Guide for Selecting Differentiation Strategies for Bright Students, identifies the curriculum differentiation strategies that are the highest priorities for challenging each high-ability student. The second tool, a survey, assesses a high ability student’s preferences for learning experiences involving the differentiation strategies included in the Guide. The OER to be developed will include all materials involved in a case study assignment that will be used in both annual offerings of EDUC 428 in the future.
  • Petra Menz, senior lecturer, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science | Research assistant: Nicole Mulberry
    Petra Menz’s project aims to find, adapt and adopt OER materials and integrate them into existing course materials for MATH 157 and MATH 158. This includes the amalgamation of course content and study skills exercises, development of online assignments, and interactive practice problem assignments. These developments will offer social calculus students three types of high-quality assessment along with cost-free course content that weaves the learning of reading and studying skills into the material in order to enhance their mathematical learning experience.
  • Mark Roseland, professor, Centre for Sustainable Community Development, School of Resource and Environmental Management, Faculty of Environment, and Joanna Ashworth, research associate, Sustainable Community Development Program, and director, FENV Centre for Sustainable Community Development, School of Resource and Environmental Management, Faculty of Environment | Research assistant: Maria Spiliotopoulou
    In 2016, the SFU Sustainable Community Development Program redesigned one of its foundational courses in order to incorporate up-to-date and interactive OER. For the new project, we aim to build on the previous one and develop an inventory of sustainability-related OER that can be accessed by all instructors at SFU. The inventory will include guides, worksheets, discussion prompts, and ideas for activities. These resources will include, for instance, TED Talks, other educational videos and documentaries, modules from MOOCs, press articles, editorials and op-eds, websites with databases, governmental documents, etc.

Round 3 | October 2016

  • Dimitris Krallis, associate professor, Hellenic Studies Program, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Research assistant: Aleksandar Jovanovic
    Dimitris Krallis aims to enhance digitized instructional support for HS 100, the introductory first-year course on Greek history and culture that takes students on a sweeping tour of some 4,000 years of Greek history. This project seeks to develop an online platform that would not only collect all the textual and visual resources currently being used for the course into one place, but also introduce interactive study aids and resources for use by students, both inside and outside of the classroom.
  • Jim Mattsson, associate professor, and Kathleen Fitzpatrick, senior lecturer, Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science | Research assistant: Nicole Szulc
    BISC 357 Gene Cloning is a popular course in which students learn both in theory and in practice how to clone DNA fragments and build novel genes designed to test specific hypotheses about gene functions. This project aims to develop a one‐stop complete site that provides students with relevant, focused and up‐to‐date information for this course at no cost. It will include “in‐house” made figures and links to sites that provide additional useful information.

Round 2 | June 2016

  • Jody Baker, limited-term lecturer, School of Communication, Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology | Research assistant: Adina Edwards
    CMNS 223W Advertising as Social Communication and CMNS 323W The Cultural Dimensions of Advertising are designed to introduce students to critical cultural studies through the analysis of advertising, branding and promotion in the context of a rapidly shifting consumer culture. The mediatized nature of promotional culture requires its study through text, image, audio and video, and the traditional printed textbook has its limitations. This project will launch the initial stages of a multimedia OER “textbook” on advertising and consumer culture.
  • Cliff Burgess, senior lecturer, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Research assistant: Noortje de Weers
    LING 110 explores the origins of contemporary English vocabulary. It does so through a detailed examination of the Greek and Latin (among other languages) roots and grammatical processes that have given rise to English as we use it today. Cliff Burgess’ project locates, adapts and curates a comprehensive set of OER LING 110 materials in a new multimedia textbook that is accessible online (through Canvas) and that can be selectively drawn upon as need requires (i.e., based on student interest in particular areas of the course, changes in disciplinary conventions, or class size variations). His project aims to develop a broader and better-organized source for students to access both the core course material and the necessary scaffolding for bringing that material to life.
  • Rob Kitsos, associate professor, School for the Contemporary Arts, Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology | Research assistant: Linnea Gwiazda
    Rob Kitsos is working on the second phase of his www.mapcollab.com project. Through the support of SFU's Teaching and Learning Development Grants, he was able to design and develop a website that acts as a teaching tool and student resource for studio composition. Since the course is taught by different instructors each semester, the website serves as a database of theory in composition and collaboration for all BFA majors, TAs and faculty members in the SCA (dance, theatre, music, visual art and film). This second phase of the project, supported by the OER Grant, aims to further develop several sections of the site related to OER tools and projects, references, and gathering research from outside sources.

Round 1 | February 2016

  • Suzanna Crage, senior lecturer, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Research assistant: Julia Smithers
    Suzanna Crage recently took over SA 150 Introduction to Sociology, which often has class sizes of over 300 students. Her interest in OER stems from a desire to reduce the financial burden imposed on students by expensive textbooks, and from her sense that OER resources will provide her with greater flexibility in course design in a field that features great variety in the topics covered in introductory courses.
  • Michelle Levy, associate professor and graduate program chair, and Colette Colligan, professor, Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Research assistant: Kendal Crawford
    Last year two faculty members at the University of Victoria created the Open Modernisms Anthology Builder (OpenMods), an online platform that enables instructors to build their own literary anthologies for the period 1850–1950. Levy and Colligan will use their grant to develop a similar platform for the Romantic period, broadly defined as extending from 1750 to 1850. Levy plans to include students in her ENGL 327 and ENGL 376 courses in the selection, preparation and uploading of files to OpenRoms.
  • Mark Roseland, professor, and Joanna Ashworth, research associate and director, professional programs, Faculty of Environment | Research assistant: Maria Spiliotopoulou
    The applicants plan to integrate OER into one of two foundational courses belonging to the Sustainable Community Development (SCD) and Resource and Environmental Management (REM) programs. Their hope is to incorporate the materials seamlessly into the course syllabus and, if possible, Canvas to create “an integrated flipped-classroom experience for an entire semester.” Their plan builds on a project they conducted last year to develop an inventory of open learning resources pertaining to sustainability.
  • Craig Scratchley, senior lecturer, School of Engineering Science, Faculty of Applied Sciences| Research assistant: Zhen Xiao
    In Craig Scratchley’s case, his interest in OER has its basis in a particular open textbook, Physical Modeling in MATLAB, that is well suited to the needs of his ENSC 180 Introduction to Engineering Analysis students in terms of its structure, content and the level of knowledge it requires from its readers. Nevertheless, Scratchley has noted a number of areas in which the book could be improved and will use his grant in part to update and adapt it to make it easier for students to use.
  • John R. Welch, professor, School of Resource and Environmental Management (REM) and Department of Archaeology, and Erin Hogg, PhD candidate, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Environment | Research assistants: Meghan Bowe and Erin Hogg
    The applicants plan to use OER to develop ARCH 286 Cultural Heritage Scholarship in Global Context, the first Breadth humanities course offered by the Department of Archaeology. Off-the-shelf materials do not meet the needs of this course, which addresses “the interface between the discipline of archaeology and the field of critical heritage studies.” As a result, the applicants envision finding, adapting and in some cases even creating OER materials for the course. Ultimately, they hope to “provide models and insights for other Archaeology course instructors.”