This document summarizes the experience of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia in introducing more open education approaches. It describes how the faculty initially relied heavily on WebCT but has since explored other platforms like Sakai and Moodle. The faculty partnered with colleagues in Vietnam to create an open online resource using Drupal after issues with Vista. Moving forward, they aim to increase awareness of copyright and intellectual property issues and slowly shift the cultural mindset towards greater adoption of open education over several years.

1. Dreams of Open Education Health and
Nutrition Resources
• a few cautious steps from
the Faculty of Land and
Food Systems at UBC
Cyprien Lomas
Director, Learning Centre
Faculty of Land and Food Systems

2. University of British Columbia
• 40K students,
• 11 schools & faculties
• have centralised /
decentralised support
• central units pushing a
simple solution
(WebCT)

3. more about UBC...
• centralised - decentralised
collaboration
• WebCT campus
• Office of Learning
Technologies is the owner
(and champion) of WebCT

4. UBC is the birthplace of WebCT
• WebCT used for everything...
• quot;just webCT itquot;
• recently switched over to Vista

5. UBC is the birthplace of WebCT
• WebCT used for everything...
• quot;just webCT itquot;
• recently switched over to Vista

6. The Faculty Mindset
• have WebCT for free...
• perceived as ‘up to date’
to be using WebCT
• anything else would take
more effort - therefore http://blogs.landfood.ubc.ca/ubcfarm/
not likely

7. Faculty use the following WebCT tools
• course content
(powerpoints / PDFs)
• discussion board
• gradebook
• quizzes

8. Faculty of Land & Food Systems
• running Sakai & Moodle servers (quietly)
• looking for people to test them out

9. Faculty of Land & Food Systems
• shotgun strategy to
changing culture
• Creative Commons
considerations
• intellectual
property

10. Faculty of Land & Food Systems
• would talk about ‘open’
only with very close,
trusted colleagues
• used with Permission from Bjorn Thomson

11. Food and Nutrition
• nutrition in Vietnam
• what are the
challenges?
• approached to talk
about potential

12. Came offering help
• instructors open to sharing
resources.. but
• don’t have the vocabulary
for what ‘open’ means
http://internationalnutrition.landfood.ubc.ca/

13. started partnership
• create site to share
resources
• Vista wouldn’t work :)
• ended up going with
Drupal

14. put together a framework
• snuck in the word ‘open’
• prof asked colleagues to
contribute materials

15. building the site...
• course content was
powerpoint & WebCT
• scrutinised ownership of
material in lecture slides

16. Phased this into a multi year plan.
• suspect that the
appropriate pace
is closer to five
years

17. Conclusions
• very willing faculty
• need to work on copyright
awareness
• much more work needed-
mostly cultural http://www.landfood.ubc.ca

18. Next steps
• holding the ‘open education’
conference in August 2009
•

19. • initiatives elsewhere in British Columbia

20. • thanks!
• Cyprien Lomas
• cyprien@gmail.com
creative commons licensed flickr photo by tyfn