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From the DVC’s Desk

Inaugural UCT Open Textbook Award

28 August 2020 | DVC A/Prof Lis Lange

Dear colleagues and students

The inaugural UCT Open Textbook Award aims to incentivise innovation in teaching and learning, recognise the efforts of open textbook authors and promote the creation and reuse of open educational resources. I write to invite nominations for this award.

Open textbooks are digital, free to use and openly licensed teaching materials. They can be broadly defined as digital collections of course-related teaching and learning content published under an open license on platforms and in formats that provide affordances for the legal integration of multimedia and the modification of various content components, as well as printing and redistribution.

They are  a type of open educational resources (OER), which are teaching resources openly shared on websites and repositories under Creative Commons licenses. This enables educators and students around the world (as well as anyone else who is interested) to legally reuse or adapt that content, provided that licensing conditions are adhered to.

The benefits of OER in terms of offering universal access to equitable, inclusive, open, participatory and high quality education are well documented. The UCT Open Textbook Award is positioned with a social justice focus in order to recognise activities which support the university’s transformation efforts. In line with this formulation, the award recognises open textbook development efforts which address any of the following criteria:

  • curriculum transformation / decolonisation
  • pedagogical innovation
  • inclusion of students and marginalised voices
  • disability access
  • relevance to local context
  • multilingualism
  • technical innovation

The award/prize may be made to single- or multiple-authored books. No restriction is placed on disciplinary orientation, languages or codes in which the book is written.

The UCT Open Textbook Award carries a value of R30 000 and may be shared between more than one recipient. There is no time limit in terms of the publication date.

The deadline for nominations is 30 September 2020.

Sincerely

Associate Professor Lis Lange
Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Teaching and Learning

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