![\"Figure](\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/teachinginadigitalage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2015\/02\/Hart-River-2.jpg\")
<\/a> Figure 12.G The Hart River, Yukon.Image: \u00a9
<\/a> Figure 12.G The Hart River, Yukon.Over a number of years, research faculty\u00a0in the Departments\u00a0of Land Management and Forestry\u00a0at the University of Western Canada had developed a range of digital graphics, computer models and simulations about watershed management, partly as a consequence of research conducted by faculty, and partly to generate support and funding for further research.<\/span><\/p>\n At a faculty meeting several\u00a0years ago, after a somewhat heated discussion, faculty members voted, by a fairly small majority, to make these educational resources\u00a0openly available for re-use for educational purposes under a Creative Commons license that requires attribution and prevents commercial use without specific written permission from the copyright holders, the faculty responsible for developing the artefacts. <\/span><\/p>\n What swayed the vote is that the majority of the faculty actively involved in the research wanted to make these resources more widely available. The agencies responsible for funding the work that resulted in the development of the learning artefacts (mainly national research councils) welcomed the move to makes these artefacts more widely available as open educational resources.<\/span><\/p>\n Initially, the researchers just put the graphics and simulations up on the research group's web site. It was left to individual faculty members to decide whether to use these resources in their teaching. Over time, faculty started to introduce these resources into a range of on-campus undergraduate and graduate courses.<\/span><\/p>\n After a while, though, word seemed to get out about these OER. Research members began to receive e-mails and phone calls from other researchers around the world. It became clear that there was a network or community of researchers in this field who were creating digital materials as a result of their research, and it made sense to share and re-use materials from other sites. This eventually led to an international web 'portal' of learning artefacts on watershed management.<\/span><\/p>\n The researchers also started to get calls from a range of different agencies, from government ministries or departments of environment, local environmental groups, First Nations\/aboriginal bands, and, occasionally, major mining or resource extraction companies, leading to some major consultancy work for the faculty in the departments. At the same time, the\u00a0faculty\u00a0were able to attract further research funding from non-governmental agencies such as the Nature Conservancy and some ecological groups, as well as from their traditional funding source, the national research councils, to develop more OER.<\/span><\/p>\n By this time, the departments\u00a0had access to a fairly large amount of OER. There were already two fourth and fifth level fully online courses built around the OER that were being offered successfully to undergraduate and graduate students.\u00a0<\/span>A proposal was therefore put forward to create initially a fully online post-graduate certificate program on watershed management, built around existing OER, in partnership with a university in the USA and another one in Sierra Leone. This certificate program was to be self-funding from tuition fees, with the tuition fees for the 25 Sierra Leone students to be initially covered\u00a0by an international aid agency. <\/span><\/p>\n The Dean, after a period of hard negotiation, persuaded the university administration that the departments'\u00a0proportion of the tuition fees from the certificate program should go directly to the departments, who would hire additional tenured faculty from the revenues to teach or backfill for the certificate, and the departments\u00a0would pay 25 per cent of the tuition revenues to the university as overheads.<\/span>This decision was made somewhat easier by a fairly substantial grant from Global\u00a0Affairs Canada to make the certificate program\u00a0available in English and French to Canadian mining and resource extraction companies with contracts and partners in African countries.<\/span><\/p>\n Although the certificate program was very successful in attracting students from North America, Europe and New Zealand, it\u00a0was not taken up very well in Africa beyond the partnership with the university in Sierra Leone, although there was a lot of interest in the OER and the issues raised in the certificate courses. After two years of running the certificate, then, the departments\u00a0made two major decisions:<\/span><\/p>\n\n Five years later, the following outcomes were recorded by the Dean at an international conference on sustainability:<\/span><\/p>\n\n <\/p>","rendered":" <\/p>\n Over a number of years, research faculty\u00a0in the Departments\u00a0of Land Management and Forestry\u00a0at the University of Western Canada had developed a range of digital graphics, computer models and simulations about watershed management, partly as a consequence of research conducted by faculty, and partly to generate support and funding for further research.<\/span><\/p>\n At a faculty meeting several\u00a0years ago, after a somewhat heated discussion, faculty members voted, by a fairly small majority, to make these educational resources\u00a0openly available for re-use for educational purposes under a Creative Commons license that requires attribution and prevents commercial use without specific written permission from the copyright holders, the faculty responsible for developing the artefacts. <\/span><\/p>\n What swayed the vote is that the majority of the faculty actively involved in the research wanted to make these resources more widely available. The agencies responsible for funding the work that resulted in the development of the learning artefacts (mainly national research councils) welcomed the move to makes these artefacts more widely available as open educational resources.<\/span><\/p>\n Initially, the researchers just put the graphics and simulations up on the research group’s web site. It was left to individual faculty members to decide whether to use these resources in their teaching. Over time, faculty started to introduce these resources into a range of on-campus undergraduate and graduate courses.<\/span><\/p>\n After a while, though, word seemed to get out about these OER. Research members began to receive e-mails and phone calls from other researchers around the world. It became clear that there was a network or community of researchers in this field who were creating digital materials as a result of their research, and it made sense to share and re-use materials from other sites. This eventually led to an international web ‘portal’ of learning artefacts on watershed management.<\/span><\/p>\n The researchers also started to get calls from a range of different agencies, from government ministries or departments of environment, local environmental groups, First Nations\/aboriginal bands, and, occasionally, major mining or resource extraction companies, leading to some major consultancy work for the faculty in the departments. At the same time, the\u00a0faculty\u00a0were able to attract further research funding from non-governmental agencies such as the Nature Conservancy and some ecological groups, as well as from their traditional funding source, the national research councils, to develop more OER.<\/span><\/p>\n By this time, the departments\u00a0had access to a fairly large amount of OER. There were already two fourth and fifth level fully online courses built around the OER that were being offered successfully to undergraduate and graduate students.\u00a0<\/span>A proposal was therefore put forward to create initially a fully online post-graduate certificate program on watershed management, built around existing OER, in partnership with a university in the USA and another one in Sierra Leone. This certificate program was to be self-funding from tuition fees, with the tuition fees for the 25 Sierra Leone students to be initially covered\u00a0by an international aid agency. <\/span><\/p>\n The Dean, after a period of hard negotiation, persuaded the university administration that the departments’\u00a0proportion of the tuition fees from the certificate program should go directly to the departments, who would hire additional tenured faculty from the revenues to teach or backfill for the certificate, and the departments\u00a0would pay 25 per cent of the tuition revenues to the university as overheads.<\/span>This decision was made somewhat easier by a fairly substantial grant from Global\u00a0Affairs Canada to make the certificate program\u00a0available in English and French to Canadian mining and resource extraction companies with contracts and partners in African countries.<\/span><\/p>\n Although the certificate program was very successful in attracting students from North America, Europe and New Zealand, it\u00a0was not taken up very well in Africa beyond the partnership with the university in Sierra Leone, although there was a lot of interest in the OER and the issues raised in the certificate courses. After two years of running the certificate, then, the departments\u00a0made two major decisions:<\/span><\/p>\n Five years later, the following outcomes were recorded by the Dean at an international conference on sustainability:<\/span><\/p>\n Although this scenario is purely a figment of my imagination, it is influenced by real and exciting work done by the following at the University of British Columbia:<\/p>\n \n\n \t
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![\"Figure](\"https:\/\/openstudio.pub\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/22\/2015\/03\/Hart-River-2.jpg\")
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Image: \u00a9 www.protectpeel.ca<\/a>, CC BY-NC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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Media Attributions<\/h2>