Open Education

As noted in the webinar below, the OER community is "late to the party" regarding resources for Vocational Education and Trades.

However, there are still excellent resources available, with many more to come as this corner of Open continues to develop:

• BCcampus hosts a wide selection of Common Core open textbooks. 

• The Electric Academy, a Youtube channel hosted by Chad Flinn, provides Open videos on electrical theory.

• Circuitry textbooks from LibreTexts

• SkillsCommons, a digital library of open workforce training materials. Search or browse by industry, material type (for example syllabi or graphics/illustrations), and more.
  • Highlights:
    • Construction reference materials
    • Sheet metal assessment tools
    • Refrigeration - online courses

"As open educational practices (OEP) continue to challenge and change higher education, Vocational Education and Trades could be seen as late to the party. Yet as an educational system that teaches hands-on skills, analytical thinking, problem-solving, and troubleshooting, vocational education fits nicely with the theories and practice of open pedagogy.

In this workshop, Amanda Coolidge (BCcampus) introduces the concepts of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP). Amanda will discuss some of the initiatives taking place in OER and discuss the many benefits institutions experience in the use of both OER and OEP.

Amanda’s introduction to OER and OEP is followed by Amanda by Chad Flinn (BCIT) who will discuss his use of OER and OEP in his own practice of teaching in the trades. Chad will discuss and showcase some of the resources he and his students have co-created as well as discuss the tools that are available to vocational instructors".

This webinar and other videos by BCcampus can be accessed through their video channel.