By Anita Rathje
KAMLOOPS — A grassroots initiative co-led by Thompson Rivers University (TRU) to foster the use of open-source technologies for higher education is gaining momentum with a $100,000 grant from British Columbia’s Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills.
The Shared Education Resources and Technology (SERT) grant enables TRU and its partners to take the Open EdTech Collective (OpenETC) to the next level.
Founded by a group including TRU, the University of Northern British Columbia and BCcampus, OpenETC arose as a voluntary effort to collaborate with other universities and colleges to share and support the use of open-source technologies such as WordPress for teaching and learning. The site’s community of educators, technologists and designers share their expertise to develop open infrastructure for BC’s post-secondary sector.
Recognizing the role OpenETC and its collaborators can play in supporting the ministry’s Digital Learning Strategy, the one-time SERT grant will fund the development of infrastructure, sharable designs and templates that will sustain the project moving forward, including a governance policy and business model. TRU, which is provincially mandated to serve BC’s open learning needs, will lead the initiative with continued collaboration across the province.
“This Shared Education Resources and Technology grant is for TRU and our partners in the OpenETC to build on our existing pilot of scalable collaborative practices for open learning technology for BC, and we hope that will allow us to expand sector efficiency across the province,” said Brian Lamb, TRU’s director of Learning Technology and Innovation and co-creator of OpenETC.
“Our goal is a sustainable model of shared learning tech practice for higher education using open-source platforms and collaborative approaches. This partnership has shown it can lower barriers to participation and build capacity on the open web for BC faculty and students.”
Open for collaboration
A popular example of an open learning tool is WordPress. In a recent project at TRU, communications students were asked to examine food security issues in Kamloops. Instead of writing papers on the topic, the students worked collectively on WordPress for their classwork. Groups each took on a different food security element, from community gardens to beekeeping to food banks, and used WordPress to map the issues and build an online resource, FoodLoops, that engages the Kamloops community.
“This type of open teaching extends activity and impact outside the classroom. It’s very hard to do that sort of thing inside a closed learning management system such as Moodle,” said Lamb.
“Open platforms such as WordPress offer great freedom and creativity to their users — which can make them challenging tools to support. Instead of each of us struggling to keep up, the OpenETC has us sharing and distributing the efforts involved by sharing knowledge, materials and practices to support one another.”
Work is already underway on OpenETC, with rollout of demonstration tools and potential business models expected this spring and summer. The SERT grant wraps up in March 2026.
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Contact:
Michele Young, Manager, Communications Content
University Relations, Thompson Rivers University
250-828-5361 | micyoung@tru.ca
