If you think Open Education Week was done on March 6, I recommend you keep checking the calendar, there’s much still happening. Today I am so glad I tuned into the grand opening for a fantastic and innovate approach to introducing OER from Trent University.
Hosted by Terry Greene @greeneterry and led by the four student contributors to a new OER, that was literally clicked Publish to be made available, for all at https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/openattrent/
OER? Oh We Are!
A Call & Response Starter Kit for Open Education at Trent University
This book is a practical guide for advancing open education at Trent University. It moves from ideas to action, offering real examples, policy pathways, and concrete supports tailored to our community. It invites faculty, staff, and students to see knowledge as shared work that is collaborative, adaptable, and alive. Most of all, it serves as a starting point for building a more accessible, connected, and sustainable culture of teaching and learning at Trent.
In a very clever design, each chapter section follows a structure an instruction and a Call & Response soundtrack, a link to pop music that aligns with the topic. The chapters then include
- Sets the stage with The Call: An Invitation to Act
- supported by Examples from Practice
- followed by Your Response: A Short Action Plan a suggested thinking exercise
- A look ahead to the next chapter to lead you forward
- closing with a Deep Dive into one example that supports the chapter (as Terry said, rather than create a long list of resources, they chose one) (thanks for making OEG Connect the Deep Dive for the Open Community Chapter!)
But see for yourself the intro chapter on Open Education: Opening the Door where the soundtrack song is (one my my favorites) Should I Stay or Should I Go by the Clash.
A later portion under the area of OER by Discipline Open Resources, Open Tools, Open Possibilities includes OER Guides by disciplnes curated by the student co-authors, like OER Guide for Psychology, OER Guide for the Sustainability Studies Program
The guidebook ends with a nifty All in One Documenter tool that makes use of an H5P Documentation content type where a reader can fill out responses to the Calls for Action and end with a document generated that summarizes the responses.
Congratulations Trent University on an innovate approach here and its musical reference theme.