Blogs

Educatus – University of Saskatchewan (Not openly licensed)

A collection of posts by instructors on topics of open pedagogy and teaching and learning practices.

Courses

Embracing Complexity in Education (CC BY-SA)

This OER is a mini-course or workshop for postgraduate level education professionals. It is relevant to any group of teachers, researchers, policy-makers, curriculum-developers, designers, etc., who approach their work with an academic focus. Through a collaborative and exploratory approach, the course provides participants with the opportunity to reflect on their practice through the lens of complexity and consider implications for their work. Participants explore complexity not only through the resources, but also through the design and methodology of the course itself.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Pedagogy and Practice (CC BY-NC)

A collection of modules designed to introduce you to concepts of equity, diversity and inclusion. Topics include Power, Privilege & Bias; Conversations on Decolonization; Navigating Difficult Conversations; Inclusive & Responsive Teaching; and Universal Design for Learning. The modules offer, frameworks, self-reflective exercises, informative activities, videos and other resources to help you explore the application of equity, diversity and inclusion in your teaching pedagogy.

Supporting Students with Disabilities Course Website (CC BY)

This course is designed for post-secondary faculty and staff who interact with students with disabilities, especially in the trades school context. If you have a role in supporting students with disabilities at your institution, this course is for you. The practical information and knowledge presented in this course will help us better understand how to create an inclusive campus and support all students in their learning and paths to success.

Guides

Accessibility Handbook for Teaching and Learning (CC BY-NC-SA)

This resource is intended as a reference for educators and support staff to understand digital accessibility, create accessible documents, and ensure everyone can access digital material.

Course Renewal in a Kit (Cricket) (CC BY)

Cricket provides resources that educators need to design or re-envision their courses and serves as a repository of openly licensed activities and assessments. Created and maintained by Thompson Rivers University.

Experiential Learning Toolkit (CC BY)

A website that provides information, examples, and templates for designing, delivering, facilitating, and evaluating experiential learning (EL) in post-secondary education.

Focus on Formative Feedback for Teaching Development [PDF] (CC BY-NC)

This guide is for anyone who teaches in higher education, or who is preparing to teach. The focus of this guide is on how formative feedback can be used to improve both the learning experiences of students and the teaching experiences of instructors.

Inclusive Design for Learning: Creating Flexible and Adaptable Content with Learners (CC BY-SA)

Inclusive Design for Learning provides a means to address this crisis of exclusion of persons with identified and unidentified disabilities, which may be permanent or episodic. This Knowledge Series paper introduces the dimensions of inclusive design as it applies to learning and focuses on the design of diverse learning experiences to help optimise learning opportunities for all learners.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility  (IDEA) (CC BY)

This) project was a collaboration between 10 universities and colleges across Ontario to develop a 6-module open educational resource for post-secondary educators to help them understand their responsibilities under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). It will help instructors and others to incorporate principles of UDL and considerations of EDI and Indigenisation in their learning environments.

Inclusive Learning Design Handbook (CC BY)

The Floe Inclusive Learning Design Handbook created by the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University is designed to assist teachers, content creators, Web developers, and others in creating adaptable and personalizable educational resources that can accommodate a diversity of learning preferences and individual needs.

Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Learning in Education (CC BY-NC)

A website to broaden the perspectives of your face-to-face or blended/online classroom. An exploration of re-connection through a balance of ancient and modern practices.

Pedagogies of Care: Open Resources for Student-Centered & Adaptive Strategies (CC BY-NC-ND)

Pedagogies of Care: Open Resources for Student-Centered & Adaptive Strategies in the New Higher-Ed Landscape offers a practical and engaging advice about what “next” should look like across higher education in a multimedia format, from sixteen current and forthcoming authors in the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education book series from West Virginia University Press.

SNOW: Inclusive Learning and Education (CC BY)

SNOW is a branch of the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University that focuses on technologies for learning and promotes understanding of inclusive learning practices. Their goal is to provide information and training about technologies and inclusive practices both in and outside the classroom. SNOW is for educators, parents, guardians and students and our resources are free whenever possible. SNOW is committed to providing open source tools that can be adapted and used freely.

The Open Faculty Patchbook (CC BY)

Fleming College faculty and our peers around the world are building a community patchwork of chapters into a quasi-textbook about pedagogy for teaching & learning in higher education. Each patch of the quilt/chapter of the book focuses on one pedagogical skill and is completed and published by different individual faculty members from any institution wanting to join in.

UDL in Campus: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education (CC BY-SA)

A guide to how UDL can be applied in higher education.

Universal Design for Learning: One Small Step (CC BY-NC-SA)

This modular book aims to provide educators with strategies and resources to use Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to support greater accessibility and inclusion in higher education at the University of Saskatchewan. It is built upon the teaching philosophy that even taking one small step (that is, making a single pointed change in your course) to provide an additional method of access, option for assessment, or strategy for engagement, is going to make a positive impact upon the learning experience, and move your course towards greater inclusivity and accessibility. This book includes activities, web resources, and opportunities for reflection. Chapters include an introduction to UDL, assessment and UDL, and UDL and best practices for technology-enabled learning.

Universal Design for Learning: A Practical Guide [PDF] (CC BY-NC-SA)

This guide provides the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework and multiple ways of entering that framework and getting started on UDL.

University Pedagogical Support (CC BY-SA)

A learning platform for university pedagogical studies. Everyone is welcome to study the modules independently. The aim of the modules is to support university teachers by giving keys to reflect their thoughts and conceptions of teaching and learning in higher education.

Monographs

Applications of LinkedIn Learning in Ontario’s Post-Secondary Institutions (CC BY-NC-SA)

Each of the cases in this book reflect a range of approaches and perspectives of using video-based resources to increase learner engagement. The authors, through their work, encourage the reader to contemplate the impact of technology on the learner and the educator. The goal of this collection is to generate ideas for your own implementation, to promote inquiry, and to grow the community’s knowledge.

Bimodal Flexible (ByFlex) Course Design (CC BY-NC-SA)

This book asks questions about whether or not trimodal flexible (HyFlex) courses are worth their costs and challenges and suggests that a bimodal flexible (ByFlex) course design, with fewer challenges, will still meet the students’ needs for flexibility and, therefore, may be a better choice. The book introduces bimodal flexible courses, explores the advantages of flexible course design for institutions, educators, and students, and explains how to design ByFlex courses, activities, and assessments.

Dissident Knowledge in Higher Education (CC BY-NC-ND)

This collection includes some of the leading authorities in the field, including Marie Battiste, Noam Chomsky, Yvonna S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith. It is geared towards courses that focus on methodology, colonialism, Indigenous research and knowledge, and theories of change.

Innovative Learning and Teaching: Experiments Across the Disciplines (CC BY-NC)

This book is about teachers who care about students’ learning and are motivated to take risks and actively reflect on how to best facilitate that learning.

Sharing Our Knowledge: Best Practices for Supporting English-Language Learners in Schools (CC BY)

A collection of final papers submitted by practicing teachers who are working toward a Post-Degree Certificate in EAL Education at the University of Saskatchewan. The overall goal of the OER collection is to provide PreK-12 educators (classroom teachers, administrators, EAL coordinators, language consultants, specialists, and others) with a source of current best practices and research.

Student-Centered Learning: Subversive Teachers and Standardized Worlds (CC BY-NC-SA)

The essays in this volume deal with the problems and prospects of fostering student-centred learning in a standards-based world through subversive teaching.

An Urgency of Teachers: The Word of Critical Digital Pedagogy (CC BY-NC)

This collection of essays explores the authors’ work in, inquiry into, and critique of online learning, educational technology, and the trends, techniques, hopes, fears, and possibilities of digital pedagogy.

Research

Inclusive Spectrums: Preliminary Research Exhibition (CC BY)

This exhibition presents the preliminary major research project ideas of OCAD University’s Inclusive Design 2019/2021 cohort. These projects explore a spectrum of themes, ranging from healthcare, to sensory experiences, to storytelling and services for cultural communities, to neurodiversity, and finally, to design practices and processes themselves.

Textbooks

Comprehensive Individualized Curriculum and Instructional Design (CC BY-NC)

This online textbook addresses the population of individuals with disabilities that experience complex lifelong needs across multiple areas in their lives. Drs. Sennott and Loman drafted this book (along with the help from some friends) with the hope of providing pertinent, practical, and current resources to future special educators who plan to serve individuals with complex disabilities.

Flipped Through Design (CC BY-NC-ND)

The “Flipped Classroom” model of instruction has generated discussion around the world of education. Numerous articles have been written documenting experiences surrounding this method of teaching. The one piece that has been missing from this discussion is a sound framework to design a “Flipped” course using proven design principles. Instructional Design provides a proven framework to design all types of instruction and these principles can be used to design a “Flipped” course.

Instructional Methods, Strategies and Technologies to Meet the Needs of All Learners (CC BY-NC-SA)

This book explores the different aspects of learning and the different ways that students learn. Topics include key pedagogical practices in instruction and student learning; surface and deep learning; motivation; direct instruction; problem-based learning; project-based learning; cooperative learning; Bloom’s taxonomy; questioning; feedback; scaffolding; differentiated instruction; Universal Design for Learning; assessment for learning; teacher-made assessment strategies; standardized and other formal assessments; assessing learning using technology; understanding by design; classroom-centred practices in mathematics; math interventions and strategies; learning with digital tools; and selection of educational technology.

Introduction to Design Equity (CC BY)

Why do affluent, liberal, and design-rich cities like Minneapolis have some of the biggest racial disparities in the country? How can designers help to create more equitable communities? Introduction to Design Equity, an open access book for students and professionals, maps design processes and products against equity research to highlight the pitfalls and potentials of design as a tool for building social justice.

Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice (CC BY)

Open pedagogy is teaching and learning practices and environments that promote equity, collaboration, and innovation and invite students to create and share knowledge with future publics, often in association with the use of open educational resources (OER). This book seeks to advance the study of open and innovative pedagogy through the belief that their impact and reach are increased by research on and analysis of the theory and practice of open pedagogy across the disciplines and via multiple modalities. In this first volume, seven author teams explore and share their work with open pedagogy in a variety of ways, including through research, practice, and autoethnographic reflection.

The Science Education Initiative Handbook (CC BY-NC-SA)

A practical guide to fostering change in university courses and faculty by embedding discipline-based education specialists within departments.

Videos

Cultural Diversity: Dr. Geneva Gay (CC BY-NC)

Dr. Geneva Gay from the University of Washington, Seattle answers the question “Why is it important for faculty to employ culturally responsive teaching practices?” (5 minutes)