Open Educational Resource Excellence and Impact Awards recipients

Dr. Jon Beasley-Murray has transformed the teaching and learning of Romance-language and Latin American literature through over a decade of Open Educational Practices. His course websites for RMST 202 and SPAN 312 / RMST 372 provide open access to lecture videos, podcasts, blog posts, open textbooks, syllabi, and innovative assessments, including contract grading. These resources give students agency over their learning, foster critical thinking, and promote public scholarship. All materials are openly licensed, allowing use, adaptation, and sharing. Importantly, the structure and accessibility of Dr. Beasley-Murray’s courses bring joy and vigour back into students’ learning. Over 95 videos and podcasts have received more than 62,000 views globally, and his approach has been adopted by colleagues and former students in Canadian and international classrooms.

Dr. Beasley-Murray’s OER are distinguished by their scholarly depth, accessibility, and inclusivity. Designed to support open pedagogy, his courses enable students to engage with materials independently—reading and viewing—before contributing to public discourse through blog posts. This approach “flips” the classroom and positions students as active participants in knowledge creation. His work also extends beyond the classroom through sustained engagement with colleagues, scholars, and authors.

His courses are part of a broader effort to expand and engage with the literary canon. By incorporating texts and perspectives from the Global South—including regions such as Latin America, Angola, Cameroon, and the Caribbean—Dr. Beasley-Murray’s teaching challenges dominant, Anglocentric narratives and foregrounds diverse voices, including women and LGBTQ+ authors. Students are encouraged to interrogate systems of knowledge production while situating canonical works within wider global and historical contexts.

Colleagues and students describe Jon as an inspiring teacher and mentor whose dedication, openness, and creativity reshape how literature is taught. His OER embody innovative pedagogy, equity, and access, while modeling high standards of scholarship. By breaking down barriers between the classroom and the wider public, Dr. Beasley-Murray demonstrates the transformative potential of open education in the humanities.

Dr. Kayli Johnson and Dr. Simon Lolliot have collaborated for over a decade to advance open educational resources (OER), with a shared focus on transforming static materials into interactive, research-informed learning environments and building capacity among educators. In 2016, Dr. Johnson co-developed the electronic Chemistry Integrated Resource Package (eChIRP), an openly accessible textbook for CHEM 123 that embedded interactive H5P-based content. This work represented an early and influential use of H5P at UBC and, alongside consultation with BCcampus, contributed to the integration of H5P into Pressbooks and the development of grant programs that have supported the creation of over 1,200 interactive activities across multiple open textbooks. Dr. Lolliot further advanced this work as Principal Investigator on a project integrating interactive and branching H5P elements into the OpenStax Psychology textbook.

To support broader adoption, Drs. Johnson and Lolliot co-founded the UBC H5P Symposium, a recurring, hands-on event that has attracted national and international participation and received a BCcampus Award for Excellence in Open Education. Their work on interactive video has also gained international recognition, including invitations to lead within the H5P community, serve as H5P Ambassadors, and contribute to major conferences such as D2L Fusion. They received the H5P Award for Impressive Use of Multimedia in 2025 and for Outstanding Visual Design in 2026.

In 2017, Drs. Johnson and Lolliot contributed to Tapestry through a multi-year TLEF grant, creating an H5P-based platform for non-linear, “choose-your-own-path” learning. The tool enables students to navigate content dynamically and, in later iterations, contribute their own material, shifting from passive learners to active knowledge producers. Tapestry also engaged students in content creation and development, with early modules addressing topics such as LGBTQ2S+ communities, disability, and intercultural understanding.

Most recently, their work has expanded into GRASP, a TLEF-supported initiative using generative AI to create adaptive, openly licensed assessment resources. Collectively, their contributions demonstrate sustained leadership in OER innovation, institutional capacity building, and the advancement of interactive open pedagogy. 

Dr. Derrick Wirtz has advanced open educational resources (OER) in psychology by creating accessible, research-informed, and student-centered learning materials that remove barriers and foster experiential learning. Since 2019, Dr. Wirtz has developed, adapted, and implemented OER for high-enrollment, required courses—including PSYO 121 (Introduction to Psychology), PSYO 270 (Introduction to Research Methods and Design), and PSYO 349 (Positive Psychology)—ensuring students have immediate, cost-free access to foundational course content. His open lab manuals and Pressbooks-hosted materials integrate weekly guided activities, templates, exemplars, and archives of student-created research, supporting over 3,600 students and saving an estimated $622,000 in textbook costs.

Dr. Wirtz’s OER approach is deeply pedagogical: materials are modular, flexible, and empirically tested, allowing students to develop research literacy, methodological reasoning, and collaborative skills through project-based learning. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his resources were rapidly adapted to virtual formats, preserving critical experiential components such as poster symposia. This work reflects an intentional shift from instructor-created course materials to provincially hosted, openly licensed textbooks, enhancing sustainability, reuse, and community contribution across institutional and disciplinary contexts.

A central advantage of OER is not only affordability, but flexibility. The modular design of the PSYO 270 materials allows them to be continuously refined and aligned with course objectives while supporting a scaffolded, term-long research experience. Students engage in a sequence of structured activities that culminate in the production of a research proposal, dataset, analysis, and poster, ensuring equitable access to hands-on research experience that is often critical for academic and professional advancement.

A defining feature of Dr. Wirtz’s approach is the integration of student-generated content into the OER ecosystem. Through open archives of undergraduate research posters, students contribute to publicly accessible knowledge, engaging in authentic forms of scholarship and shifting from passive learners to active producers of psychological science. Affordability, in this context, is not merely an economic outcome but a pedagogical one.

Beyond his own teaching, Dr. Wirtz has championed OER adoption within the department and across UBC, demonstrating the transformative potential of open education to enhance accessibility, equity, and innovation. 

Fundamentals of Cell Biology represents a transformative collaboration advancing open educational resources in foundational life sciences. Developed by Dr. Robin Young, Dr. Lauren Dalton, and illustrator Heather Ng-Cornish, the textbook provides an accessible, high-quality resource for one of the most widely required courses in biology programs.

Since its 2024 publication, the textbook has served as the primary resource for cell biology courses at UBC Okanagan and Oregon State University, supporting over 1,000 students annually while eliminating approximately $100 in textbook costs per student. Adoption has expanded to more than 24 institutions worldwide, including UBC Vancouver, reaching thousands of additional students each year. The resource has recorded over 300,000 page views, 100,000 unique users, and more than 18,000 downloads.

Designed for students encountering cell biology for the first time, the textbook emphasizes clarity, accessibility, and engagement with the scientific process. Rather than presenting knowledge as fixed, it situates core concepts within the experimental methods through which they are understood, fostering critical thinking, problem-solving, and scientific literacy. The text follows best practices in open education, incorporating Universal Design for Learning principles, accessible formatting, and inclusive design features such as colour-blind-friendly graphics, alt-text, and multimodal access.

A defining strength of the project is its commitment to representation and student connection. Drs. Young and Dalton intentionally create space for diverse identities within the scientific narrative, acknowledging varied cultural and educational backgrounds while highlighting contributions from underrepresented scientists. This approach reflects a broader pedagogical aim: to ensure that students can see themselves within the discipline and engage meaningfully with its practices.

Ms. Ng-Cornish, then an undergraduate student at UBC Okanagan, played a central and indispensable role as the primary illustrator. Her more than 200 original illustrations are integral to the clarity and accessibility of the material, particularly for students encountering complex cellular processes for the first time.  

Importantly, the impact of this resource extends well beyond affordability. It exemplifies how open, thoughtfully designed materials can enhance learning, expand access, and support student success across diverse educational contexts.  

Dr. Lindsay Cuff, an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Faculties of Forestry and Land & Food Systems, is a trailblazer in advancing open educational resources (OER) to break down economic barriers and enhance accessibility in education.

In 2022, she created Writing Place: A Scholarly Writing Textbook—a free, online, dynamic textbook used in LFS 150 and NRES 150. This innovative open resource provides carefully scaffolded and interactive discipline-specific content relevant to the disciplines of Land & Food Systems and Forestry, as well as the communities these disciplines have partnerships with. In total, it contains 13 chapters, with Student Learning Goals, Questions for Reflection, and Key Take Away sections for each chapter; 97 illustrations; 29 HP5 interactive activities, and 10 Student Narratives.

This resource supports students in meaningfully contributing to scholarly conversations in their disciplines, as well as empowering them to consider how these skills might be used to effectively communicate with communities beyond the university. Writing Place enhances accessibility through Universal Design for Learning principles, and integrates an inclusive, decolonial approach to scholarly writing. The resource reflects Professor Cuff’s teaching philosophy, which values storytelling as a transformative tool to connect students, instructors, and the places they inhabit. Over 900 students in LFS 150 and NRES have benefited from this resource.

A Toolkit for Teaching Communication Skills in Social Work is an open educational resource that was developed to support student’s learning of basic interpersonal communication skills. In conjunction with UBC Studios, Drs. Allison and Nightbird designed and developed a package of five videos to demonstrate the core communication skills taught in all three sections of SOWK 310A. This involved writing scripts, hiring, and training actors, and supporting UBC Studios with the filming and editing of the videos. Grounded in the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, the videos included "signalling" and "segmenting" for ease of learning. The toolkit also includes transcripts of each video, and a teaching guide that outlines the pedagogical benefits of using demonstration videos, offers vignette summaries of each video and describes the micro skills that are taught in each video.

These videos have been beneficial to social work students at the UBC School of Social Work in learning core communication skills. This accessible resource supports a rich learning environment where students and instructors together explore the nuances of communication techniques and their application in various contexts. These videos allow students a better understanding of how these skills translate to real-world situations. With a focus on equity, diversity, and inclusion, the resource highlights representation of human diversity, and is guided by principles of universal design.

Dr. Ramon Lawrence, Professor of Computer Science at UBC Okanagan and a recipient of a 2020 Killam Teaching Prize, has been a passionate leader in Open Educational Resources (OER) since 2006. His OER materials have saved students over $500,000 in textbook costs, directly benefited more than 3,000 learners, and are adopted by instructors at UBC Okanagan.

He has integrated open educational resources in his courses since he joined UBC in 2006. His work exemplifies the principles and practices of accessibility, equity, diversity, and inclusion, and his efforts in developing and scaling OER have made significant contributions to student engagement and learning outcomes.

In addition to course content, his innovative open-source projects, such as the HelpMe AI support platform and PrairieLearn deployments, are improving student support and assessment, advancing accessible, engaging education at UBC and leading the integration of artificial intelligence in learning.

Dr. Lawrence's tireless efforts to develop, refine and share OER have made significant contributions to student engagement and advanced the mission of accessible education. Through his innovative OER platforms and resources, mentorship, and collaborative spirit, he continues to strengthen the UBCO community.

The Introduction to Engineering Thermodynamics open textbook and problem bank have transformed how foundational engineering concepts are taught, making high-quality, interactive content freely available. Through the development of accessible, innovative resources, the team has fostered a culture of inclusivity, empowered student engagement, and achieved substantial cost savings for learners.

Led by Dr. Claire Yan, Professor of Teaching, School of Engineering, the project team includes Dr. Casey Keulen, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Materials Engineering; Dr. Amir M. Dehkhoda, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Materials Engineering; and teaching assistants Hariharan Umashankar and Ali Doustahadi.

Designed with Universal Design for Learning principles and freely accessible worldwide, this resource features interactive H5P questions and programmable problem sets that foster inclusivity, engagement, and practical skill-building. Adopted by courses at UBC and Arizona State University, it supports over 750 students annually, saving them an estimated $32,500–$48,700 in textbook costs.

Through interdisciplinary collaboration, the team has earned accolades like UBC Okanagan’s “Books of the Year” (2022) and Dr. Yan’s BCcampus Award for Excellence in Open Education (2023). These openly licensed resources, shared via GitHub and open repositories like UBC cIRcle, OER Commons, and LibreTexts, continue to inspire and empower educators and learners globally.

This work exemplifies the power of OER in enhancing student learning and advancing educational innovation. The team is proud to advance equitable access and pedagogical innovation in engineering education at UBC and beyond.

Dr. Ahmed has focused on developing multiple free and openly licensed educational resources, including creating new open textbooks, practice quizzes, and other OERs in areas such as computing in natural resources, forest biometrics, statistics and geospatial data analysis. She has worked with students on the creation of many of these resources, mentoring and fostering a collaborative environment for OER development.

In the development of OER materials, Dr. Ahmed diligently follows accessibility best practices, with a focus on creating resources with universal design principles in mind to ensure they are usable and inclusive for a diverse range of learners. For example, interactive tools and digital textbooks are designed with screen-reader compatibility and user-friendly interfaces. This commitment to accessibility, as well as her attention to incorporating inclusive language and diverse examples, underscores her dedication to creating equitable learning environments through OERs.

Drs. Campbell, Timbers, Lee, Östblom and Heagy are recognized for their work on two textbooks on data science—the original book for the R programming language and its recently completed translation to the Python programming language—as well as their accompanying Jupyter notebook autograded worksheets. These materials replace paid course materials for over 2,300 students annually at UBC, and are used extensively in UBC’s DSCI100: Introduction to Data Science course. They are also being used in courses at several other institutions in North America, and have been accessed by people from many other parts of the world as well. In addition, team members have successfully encouraged colleagues to share course materials openly on Github.

Accessibility was a key design criterion when producing the materials. Colour palettes are designed to be accessible to all, mathematical equations are typeset in a scalable format using MathJax, and fonts are sized appropriately. Accessibility is also incorporated into the textbook content itself; for example, in the chapter on visualizations, a subsection is devoted to designing visualizations with particular colour palettes and various forms of visual redundancy.

Dr. Bowen Hui is an exemplary role model and leader at the forefront of OER and accessibility, significantly impacting colleagues and students alike. Dr. Hui engages meaningfully with collaborators and students as partners in the development of her projects, providing enhanced learning opportunities and mentoring while supporting OER development. Dr. Hui’s early OER work began with projects focused on designing open-source introductory programming assessments and human-computer interaction materials that improved accessibility for students with diverse academic backgrounds. Building on her initial success, Dr. Hui has continued to prioritize OER development with numerous related projects that have significantly contributed to removing cost barriers and supporting students to learn at their own pace and through their own pathways, including an interactive reading platform, course gamification platform, and team formation tool.

In addition to her work in post-secondary education, Dr. Hui uses OER to foster the development of computational thinking abilities in young children. Her passionate advocacy has resulted in the creation of a variety of multimodal and gender-neutral resources, supporting STEM engagement in the public school systems. She was also the technical lead in the UBC Curriculum MAP project, which has been adopted by other institutions and is used around the world.

Drs. Freeman, McNeil and Petillion championed a multi-year effort to transform UBC Okanagan’s introductory chemistry courses, resulting in the development and integration of 17 different OER learning activities into the first-year chemistry curriculum. Using delivery methods that emphasize active learning, the learning activities encourage students to build knowledge together through frequent opportunities for small-group discussion that reveal the impacts of chemistry principles on their own lives.

Drs. Freeman, McNeil, and Petillion epitomize excellence in OER, leveraging and expanding upon the work of their predecessors in the OER community to create adaptable materials that will benefit students and instructors alike. Their dedication to OER has not only supported students in meeting learning outcomes more effectively but has also resulted in significant cost savings for countless students.