MUTABLE

The DRC is a pan-Canadian collaboration of universities, partner organizations, and volunteers coordinated by staff employed on a contract basis. Its goal is to curate, redevelop, and develop open digital instructional resources for use by faculty members and students in Canada’s universities and to deploy them in time for the 2020–2021 academic year (i.e., September 2020–August 2021).

As of the most recent revision of this document (see version information below), seventeen universities are currently participating in the DRC. In addition, faculty or staff members from other institutions also participate on an individual basis (see Q2). A small number of volunteers with particular expertise participate in specific areas of the work. The DRC maintains a structural link with the Maple League of Universities through its Executive Director and the Director of the Maple League Virtual Teaching and Learning Centre. The list of partner organizations continues to grow.

The project is currently overseen by a coordinator and an administrator who are employed on a contractual basis (see Q3 and elsewhere).

No colleges per se are directly involved, but some participating universities are members of Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan), with which the DRC is working. Colleges should discuss involvement with CICan directly.

Absolutely! The DRC welcomes participation by interested volunteers, including faculty members, normally as part of faculty expert group in one of the critical subject areas (see below, Q 13–20) or as part of the Technical Advisory Committee. Please simply contact the project coordinator, David Graham (david@thexenops.ca) or the project administrator, Aytaj Pashayeva (apashayeva@higheredstrategy.com).

All universities face similar challenges in preparing for the 2020–2021 academic year. DRC participants believe that by pooling our capacity and our strengths, we can reduce the collective burden imposed by those challenges. By working together, we can simultaneously reduce the overall workload and achieve more in a shorter period of time than any institution can manage on its own. By demonstrating our collective commitment to effective pan-Canadian collaboration, we are also able to approach external agencies to seek additional financial support more effectively and persuasively than a single institution could do by itself.

The members are faculty members from participating universities or who have indicated a desire to be involved in the work of the consortium, usually because they are committed to the principle of collaborative development and resource sharing; they have demonstrated expertise in one of the critical subject areas identified by the consortium and are deemed to be subject matter experts (SMEs).

The development process will be governed by protocols being developed by the TAC, and will be undertaken through a collaborative effort between faculty expert groups and educational developers in the participating institutions.

The TAC (see Q5) has identified a number of areas needing immediate attention, including QA. An expert subcommittee of the TAC is currently working on this area and will bring forward its recommendations in time for their application to resources developed for September.

The consortium partners with BCCampus, Campus Manitoba, and eCampus Ontario to ensure access to their repositories and distribution channels, and with a growing list of other partners including Libraries and Archives Canada (LAC), the Legacy of Hope Foundation, and the Engineering Deans’ Council of Canada that are involved in the development of digital content for use in educational settings. As well, institutions or individual faculty members may wish to mirror digital resources from the consortium’s work more locally so as to provide a more familiar access point to faculty and students within institutions. Because of these partnerships, creation of open resources is a high priority.

A useful definition is provided by BCCampus, which uses the term “open educational resources” to mean “teaching, learning, and research resources that, through permissions granted by their creator, allow others to use, distribute, keep, or make changes to them.” The consortium gives a high priority to the development of open resources: it is essential to note, however, that the hierarchy of Creative Commons and other forms of licensing allows content creators to retain as much control over the use of their material as they themselves wish. As BCCampus puts it, “Open licences enable collaboration, development, access, and inspiration from your creative works without requiring you to give up the rights (copyright) automatically granted to you for your creation” (emphasis added).

No such commitment is required, but some institutions have made a voluntary commitment in order to strengthen the case for support as we approach external agencies to seek funding to support the project.

Initial start-up funding was provided by the McConnell Foundation, which continues to maintain an interest in the project. This funding enabled the appointment of the coordinator and the administrator on a contract basis. The DRC is currently seeking additional external funding to support their continued involvement and to provide additional support in other areas, including unfunded but essential institutional expenditures necessitated by digital resource development, support for faculty expert groups (see below, Q 13–20), and support for students in need (e.g., from disadvantaged or marginalized backgrounds, students with disabilities or from designated groups, and students from rural or remote communities who face additional obstacles in a remote instructional context). The DRC assigns special priority to the needs of Indigenous learners.

That question remains to be decided, but the question of how to ensure the long-term continued existence of the consortium has already been raised. All resource development by the consortium will be undertaken with an eye to ensuring that resources will remain useful in the widest possible spectrum of instructional contexts, from fully or almost fully remote through blended or HyFlex to on-campus or face- to-face instruction.

The expert groups bring together faculty members from different institutions who teach in a identified critical subject area, so as to identify areas of content that would benefit from access to improved or new open digital resources, and to consult with development teams to produce the necessary improvements or new resources.

Participants in the DRC have identified a list of areas with one or more of the following characteristics:

1. A high degree of common content, regardless of institution, textbook, instructor, delivery method, sequence of topics, method of examination, or other such considerations (e.g., many introductory science and social science areas);

2. Relatively high enrolment (e.g., large introductory lecture courses);

3. Typically taken by students planning to enter different academic streams (e.g., foundational areas such as mathematics, psychology, or composition/writing);

4. Facing special challenges (e.g., performing and studio arts and design; STEM disciplines (e.g., because of labs); health sciences (physical presence is normally required); work-integrated learning, co-op, placements, field courses (because of changes to workplaces and travel restrictions).

By “digital resources”, we mean all forms of digitized material intended to support academic content, including by not limited to such materials as digital audio and video, simulations, documentation, virtualization of activities, self-instructional modules, self-assessment tools, examinations and assignments, etc.

By “resource development”, we mean three broad categories of activity:

1. Curation of existing digital resources (e.g., annotated and linked resource lists) and “meta-curation” (e.g., curation of such lists);

2. Modification of existing digital resources (e.g., updating of outdated material; generalization of existing resources originally development for use in a specific and limited context, so as to make them more widely applicable; modification of resources to make them systems-agnostic; etc);

3. Creation of new digital resources where critical gaps have been identified (e.g., areas of content in which no suitable resource exists, or where an existing resource has become inaccessible for some reason, for example because of prohibitive licensing fees).

We believe that by pooling our strengths, we can reduce the overall workload on participants. That said, the intention is still to keep the workload as light as possible. Our working assumption is that faculty expert group members will already have developed the academic content for their courses, and so content development per se is not part of the project activity. The work is expected to involve three types of activity. First, identifying the areas of content where new or redeveloped (or curated) resources would be most helpful and most urgently needed. Second, brainstorming in order to identify what types of resources (new or redeveloped) would be best suited to those areas. Third, interacting with development teams to work through the actual development process, including prototyping, testing and refinement, and deployment.

Because of the need to prepare for the full resumption of activities in September, resources intended for use in the first month of classes will need to be readied for August 15 in order to permit deployment and testing before classes start. Additional resource development may continue beyond that date, however, with a view to readying resources for deployment later in the fall term, in the winter term, and in future academic years.

While the DRC cannot itself offer tangible incentives such as release time, some participating institutions may be able to do so in special cases. Our primary commitment is to keep the work needed to support resource development to the absolute minimum; to that end, we coordinate, facilitate and support the work of the expert groups. We are also actively seeking external funding in order to provide more tangible forms of support to faculty (and to students), with priority given to those who take on a leadership role in a group. Some partner organizations offer training and workshops. Faculty who are involved in the DRC will benefit from access to resources on improving teaching and learning as well as to a community of committed practitioners who are eager to share their best practices and lessons learned.

Students may be invited to participate in the development process by taking part in the testing process for curated, redeveloped or newly developed digital resources. If this is of interest to you, please contact the project coordinator, David Graham (david@thexenops.ca) or the project administrator, Aytaj Pashayeva (apashayeva@higheredstrategy.com).

Student support is a critical part of our case for support. The DRC is deeply concerned by the challenges faced by many students who, for a variety of reasons, lack access to the technological and other support they need. We are particularly interested in the challenges faced by learners in rural and remote communities and by members of Canada’s designated groups (women, visible minorities, people with disabilities, and Indigenous people). Some participating institutions may have their own programmes to employ or support students who wish to involve themselves in the work of the DRC.

You can find some basic information about the project here and here, including some stories about faculty members successfully making the transition to a remote teaching and learning context. To learn more or find out how to get involved, simply contact the project coordinator, David Graham (david@thexenops.ca) or the project administrator, Aytaj Pashayeva (apashayeva@higheredstrategy.com).