File:POERUP D3.3 Report on in-depth case study Athabasca.pdf

Executive Summary

This study is conducted within the frame of the POERUP project, funded by the lifelong learning program of the European Commission (POERUP, 2013). The POERUP project aims to enable the development of policies to stimulate the uptake of open educational resources. Within the POERUP project, partners from the Open University of the Netherlands, Sero Consulting, the University of Leicester and the University of Athabasca collaborated to gather the data with help from the OEP initiatives under investigation. The analysis in this report is of the case study conducted by Athabasca University on BCcampus.

Short description of case study

This information was primarily compiled from information available on the BCcampus Website: http://www.bccampus.ca and a short case-study template exercise conducted by Prof. McGreal.

BCcampus is a publicly funded organization that aims to bring together B.C.'s post-secondary system and make higher education available to everyone, through the use of collaborative information technology services. BCcampus was established in 2002 by the provincial government to provide British Columbia learners, educators and administrators with a web-based portal to online learning programs and services across the B.C. post-secondary system. For ten years BCcampus administered an online program development fund (OPDF), which in 2012-13 has been re-purposed into Canada’s first publicly-funded open textbook development project. It also explores and develops shared services, facilitates the distribution of best practice knowledge, provides professional development and training, and manages a collection of shareable online instructional resources and tools for educators.

Aim and goal: BCcampus brings together existing online resources to ensure maximum convenience and value for publicly funded online education services. It fosters collaborative design and engineering of new courses, services, and tools to reduce duplication and incorporate best practices into online instruction. And, it ensures that educators have the systemic support resources they need to provide quality online instruction.