Dear colleagues,

I am absolutely thrilled to share the news that our wonderful colleague Arley Cruthers is the latest recipient of the BCcampus Award for Excellence in Open Education!

From the press release:

“Arley is an innovative leader in the open movement at KPU and an early adopter of open pedagogy at the university, having attended the Digital Pedagogy Lab in Vancouver in 2017. In 2019, Arley published an open textbook on business writing and received grant funding to work with external collaborators to include more diverse voices in the book and to incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing and Arley uses an open-pedagogical approach to curriculum development in all courses.

Recently Arley led two classes (50 primary and secondary students total) to collaboratively research and write a report on the impact of textbook costs on students. Students then needed to remix the report into a different format for a different audience. One of the remix projects was a game to help instructors develop empathy towards students in relation to textbook costs. At the Cascadia Open Education Summit in 2019 Arley and three students presented the game and the research to an audience of educators from B.C., Washington, Oregon, and beyond. The presentation was very well-received and many took to Twitter to share that it was one of the best sessions at the conference.

Arley has inspired numerous others in the School of Business to embrace open pedagogy and open education resources, and is incredibly well-deserving of an Award for Excellence in Open Education. Arley will be presenting on the results of the research at the 2019 KPU Symposium.”

Read more at: https://bccampus.ca/2019/05/30/award-for-excellence-in-open-education-arley-cruther/

I am grateful to Arley’s colleague Melissa Ashman for nominating her for this thoroughly well-deserved recognition. This is the third instance of this award being given to a member of the KPU community, the most of any BC institution.  Please join me in congratulating Arley!

Cheers,

Rajiv