Call for nominations: 2021 UCT Open Textbook Award

Dear colleagues and students

The UCT Open Textbook Award is an initiative of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Teaching and Learning, which 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.

The award, launched in 2020, was shared in its first year between Professor Johan Fagan for his Open Access Atlas of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Operative Surgery and Dr Michael Held for his Orthopaedics for Primary Health Care textbook.

• Read more about the 2020 award winners.

Open textbooks are digital, free to use and openly licensed collections of course-related teaching and learning content published on platforms and in formats that provide affordances for the integration of multimedia and ancillary practice and assessment components. These locally published textbooks provide opportunities for inclusive, collaborative authorship strategies. The open licensing aspect also means that these resources can be legally shared and redistributed, both within and beyond the institution.

The UCT Open Textbook Award has a social justice focus and aims to recognise activities that support the university’s transformation efforts. In line with this approach, the award recognises open textbook development initiatives 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 may be made to single or multiple authored books. No restriction is placed on disciplinary orientation, language or format in which the book is written. There is no restriction in terms of the publication date of the work. All nominated works must carry a Creative Commons or similar open license.

The UCT Open Textbook Award carries a value of R30 000 and may be shared between more than one recipient. Prior award recipients are asked to observe a two-year waiting period before submitting nominations for subsequently published works.

The deadline for nominations is 30 July 2021.

For more information, please visit the UCT Open Textbook Award page on the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching website.

Sincerely

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

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