Integral Calculus with Applications to Life Sciences by Tsopméné, Paul, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Queer Geography Dictionary by Sloan Morgan, Onyx and Nassim Zand Dizari, CC BY-NC 4.0.
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available for others to use, adapt, and share. UBC has an ongoing commitment to OER as a way to reduce student costs and expand equitable access to course materials. This work is supported through initiatives such as OER Fund grants, collaborative support from the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT) and UBC Library, and recognition of open education contributions within the university’s teaching and promotion practices. If you are new to OER, Open UBC is a great starting point for exploring how OER are created and used at UBC.
Access and Preservation
A growing number of OER are available in cIRcle, which provides stable, long-term access to educational resources created at UBC. While cIRcle is not recommended for ongoing edits or interactive content, it offers a reliable “version of record” for OER. This makes it a useful complement to platforms such as Pressbooks, where resources may continue to be updated, by ensuring a preserved and citable version is available over time.
Enhancing OER Discovery in cIRcle
The UBC Open Educational Resources Series in cIRcle brings together OER across disciplines, making them easier to browse in one place. Some recent highlights include Integral Calculus with Applications to Life Sciences, a textbook which connects mathematics to real-world biological applications, and the Queer Geography Dictionary, a student-created resource that defines key terms in the evolving field of queer geography.
To further support discovery, a team at the Library has been working to enhance how OER in cIRcle are described. This work began as a pilot in 2024 and is now being integrated into ongoing operations. As part of this initiative, you may notice a brief “OER Description” added to the metadata of some records. These structured descriptions highlight key details such as resource type, subject area, and intended audience, helping instructors more effectively identify materials that match their course level and teaching needs. This additional context helps address some of the limitations of repository-based access by making materials easier to find and assess for reuse.
Getting Started
Explore recent additions to the UBC OER Series in cIRcle.
Are you a UBC faculty member who has developed an OER, and are interested in depositing a version to cIRcle? Review our Faculty and Staff Work page, where you can use the cIRcle Item Submission Form to get started with your submission.
Interested in integrating OER into your teaching or starting your own project? Explore Open UBC or reach out to the team at open.ubc@ubc.ca for a consultation.