Documentation:Open UBC/Fast Facts for Students

Did you know...

• only 24% of UBC students expect to graduate debt-free?
• the cost of textbooks increases at several times the average rate of inflation?
• many students skip buying textbooks due to cost, even though they know it will hurt their learning?

Have you ever felt...

• angry when you buy expensive textbooks only for your professors to assign a few chapters?
• disappointed that the hard work you put into your courses is seen once by your professors, then never seen by anyone again?

Open as a solution

Open educational resources (OERs) and open teaching and learning practices are part of the solution to these problems. OERs are any resources used for teaching and learning that are free for anyone to access, edit, and redistribute, unlike regular textbooks which are under heavy copyright restrictions. OERs are free, can be edited and combined to better fit a course, and can even be edited by students. Open practices include students publishing their work in open journals and on their own blogs.

Some examples of what happens when OERs and other open educational practices are adopted at UBC:

• Students in Physics 100 save a total of $90,000 in one year.
• Undergraduate student work is shared with audiences in the hundreds of thousands on Wikipedia.
• Students help develop a free textbook to be used by other students in subsequent years.
• UBC students publish their work in open journals and repositories (like publicly accessible blogs and wikis).

Learn More

If you want to learn more and get involved in the open movement yourself, visit our Learn page.