We are pleased to announce the recipients of this year's Open Education Resources (OER) Excellence and Impact Awards.
The OER Excellence and Impact Awards recognize outstanding work by faculty who materially advance the use and impact of open educational resources in credit courses at UBC.
Recipients were selected based on their overall excellence in creating, revising or using OER in teaching and learning; the impact of their OER work on students, including addressing the affordability of educational materials; and their contribution to the greater open education community at UBC.
UBC Vancouver: Individual award
Dr. Jon Beasley-Murray, Associate Professor, Department of French, Hispanic & Italian Studies, Faculty of Arts
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.
UBC Vancouver: Group award
Dr. Kayli Johnson, Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science
Dr. Simon Lolliot, Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts
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.
UBC Okanagan: Individual award
Dr. Derrick R. Wirtz, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts
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.
UBC Okanagan: Group award
Dr. Robin Young, Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science
Dr. Lauren Dalton, Senior Instructor, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Oregon State University
Heather Ng-Cornish, Scientific Illustrator and Master’s Student in Science Communication, Laurentian University
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.
