Open Education Communities of Practice (September 2020)

Canadian Open Education Communities of Practice for Librarians

BC Open Education Librarians
Community focused on OE in British Columbia. This group supports librarians and faculty in advocating for open education. The group meets monthly and publicly shares projects and meeting minutes. There are also working groups dedicated to engagement, publishing and Professional Development and Advocacy.

Ontario Open Library Network
An initiative to support OE at Ontario Colleges and Universities. The group shares resources and provides support for various OE projects through a shared Slack group and collaborative Google Drive.

Alberta OER Community of Practice
An informal group of Alberta practitioners who work with OE in various roles across Alberta. The group shares activities through a Google Group, and uses the hashtag #aboerjc for scheduled discussions on Twitter.

Other Opportunities for Open Education Community

Open Education Cross-Canada Coffee Chat (#OECCCC)
These (almost) monthly informal calls are organized by the CARL Open Education Working Group. They serve as an opportunity for the community to meet and exchange informally on a variety of open education topics. Calls are announced on the CARL website as well as on the Canada OER Group list (see below). Calls are primarily in English, with French calls held twice a year.

Canada OER Group
The Canada OER Group is a national working group of educators, librarians, facilitators, and administrators from various post-secondary institutions. The group came together in 2016 to share a common goal: make higher education more accessible by reducing student costs through the use of free or low-cost open educational resources (OER).

Réseau-REL
This French-language listserv, supported by the École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information de l’Université de Montréal, brings together those within Québec’s educational system that are interested in OER and open education generally.

ScholComm in Canada
A community of librarians practicing from various sectors of the scholarly communications domain, (includes a channel specific to OER). This community is based in Slack which allows users to create and respond to posts.

OER Commons 
An online space for sharing of OE practices for anyone involved or interested in OE. This community is supported through the OER Commons interface.

SPARC – LibOER
A Community of practice that supports Academic Librarians, and includes a monthly call on the first Tuesday of every month (see website for details).

REBUS Community Contributor Marketplace
An online space for sharing and building community around the creation of OE content with librarians and other professionals involved with OE.

Creative Commons Open Education Platform
A space for open education advocates and practitioners to identify, plan and coordinate multi-national open education content, practices and policy activities to foster better sharing of knowledge. The plateform already has over 1,000 members in over 90 countries. Anyone interested in open education is welcome to join its Slack channel #cc-openedu.