BCcampus has demonstrated a highly visible, engaging, and comprehensive approach to the advocacy, implementation, and support of open textbooks across the British Columbia post-secondary sector. Recognizing early on that faculty and instructor support was critical to success, BCcampus built a robust infrastructure of workshops, training, services, faculty fellowships, and authoring tools that have become key elements of open textbook adoption and use.
The BC Open Textbook Project was officially launched on October 16, 2012, at the annual OpenEd conference in Vancouver, when the provincial Minister of Advanced Education announced government support for the initiative. Managed by BCcampus and funded by the BC Ministry of Advanced Education, the project’s initial goal was to make higher education more accessible by reducing student costs through openly licensed textbooks aligned with the province’s 40 highest-enrolled subject areas. A second phase, launched in 2014, expanded the collection to include 20 additional textbooks in trades and skills training.
To support adoption, BCcampus created open.bccampus.ca, a hub for advocacy, curation, and faculty support. They also developed the Pressbooks open-source authoring and editing plugin, enabling instructors to customize and localize digital resources to better fit their students’ needs—an innovation now used by BCcampus, Lumen Learning, and other organizations. Complementing this, the Faculty Fellows Program provides financial support and recognition for faculty who advance open education and open pedagogy.
BCcampus textbooks are openly licensed under Creative Commons, offered free in multiple e-book formats, and available in print at cost. Beyond textbooks, their comprehensive support system has fostered a culture of openness, empowering faculty, expanding adoption across institutions, and contributing to the development of an open future for teaching practices and educational resources.
