In 2018, Kim Carter took an Open Education MOOC with eCampus Ontario, sparking a passion that has since caught fire. A first-generation university graduate, Kim was inspired by Open’s social justice foundations. As a professor in the business school, Kim eagerly searched for office administration OER. Facing a resource desert for her health office admin students, she decided to create an OER in collaboration with peers across the province, publishing Building a Medical Terminology Foundation in 2020. The resource has since been adopted and adapted multiple times, including by a 17-college system in Wisconsin. Kim’s spark kept burning, and in 2021, with Ontario’s Virtual Learning Strategy (VLS) funding, her authoring team published the Therapeutic Communication for Health Care Administrators text and set of game simulations.
Kim received support from the college’s library staff on her projects, but she knew that Conestoga could and should do more. She proposed a new initiative to encourage and help faculty access the college’s resources. Highlighting the initiative’s alignment with the college’s strategic goals, Kim arranged a secondment to a new admin role of OER consultant. Together with the eLearning and digital skills library technologist, she brought more faculty into the fold, helped to publish several titles under VLS funding, hired students to support the work, and advocated for Open Education whenever someone passed her the proverbial mic.
To support her efforts, Kim completed the Professional Program in Open Education at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in 2023 and now takes every opportunity to “share alike,” what she learned — such as speaking at OE Global, and regularly participating in college, provincial, national, and international webinars, symposiums, and conferences.
As part of her new role, she encouraged Conestoga’s teaching case development program to launch a new publication—the OATCJ: Open Access Teaching Case Journal—which has published three issues and a special French-language issue, RCELA: Revue de Cas d’Enseignement en Libre Accès, translated with the support of eCampus Ontario. Squaring off against for-pay models, the OATCJ has brought Open to the case writing community.
Knowing that publishing more quality OER would need more dedicated people and more skill sets, Kim transitioned her one-person special initiative into a permanent role and a growing Open Learning Team within Conestoga’s Library and Learning Services.
Under Kim’s direction, the Open Learning team is now
- Establishing an OER publication process to ensure high-quality publications.
- Supporting faculty through resource searches, one-on-one consultations, and editorial and production support.
- Supporting faculty with funding applications, such as eCampus Ontario’s Ranger program and the Specialized Open Educational Resources funding
- Creating connections between teams to ensure library, faculty, media services, and LMS teams work together.
- Facilitating work-study and co-op students to complete a student engagement project each term, such as an orientation video and an Open Week info table.
- Developing a six-course microcredential on Open for the college’s Post-Secondary Teaching Certificate, which centres around Open pedagogies and teaching practices before exploring the how-tos of OER adoption, adaptation, and creation.
Follow Kimberlee Carter on LinkedIn.
Kimberlee Carter is a true catalyst, her passion ignites people like a chemical reaction—even when it’s a slow burn, she doesn’t give up. And she takes every opportunity to bring Conestoga’s faculty, administrators, staff, and students along on her open journey.
Award Nominator
Kimberlee deserves to be recognised for her excellent efforts in effectively leading her team, putting together the right people for the task, taking care of them, recognising explicitly their achievements and trusting them with all the tasks that require skills she does not possess. [She is] a great example of leadership, [with] great motivation provided by her collaborators.
Award Reviewer
Message from the Awardee
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It’s very appropriate that Terry Greene, winner of a 2024 Wildcard Award for his Gettin’ Air podcast has published an episode with Kimberlee Carter that includes mention of her Catalyst Award.
