This second edition is an update and expansion of the Adoption Guide created by BCcampus Open Education and several faculty and staff who attended the Adoption Workshop Development Sprint on March 31–April 1, 2016 in Vancouver.

BCcampus Open Education began in 2012 as the B.C. Open Textbook Project with the goal of making post-secondary education in British Columbia more accessible by reducing students’ costs through the use of open textbooks and other OER. BCcampus supports the post-secondary institutions of British Columbia as they adapt and evolve their teaching and learning practices to enable powerful learning opportunities for the students of B.C. BCcampus Open Education is funded by the British Columbia Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training and the Hewlett Foundation.

Open educational resources (OER) are defined as teaching, learning, and research resources that, through permissions granted by the copyright holder, allow others to use, distribute, keep, or make changes to them. We consider this publication—along with our guides, slide decks, and other support materials—as a type of OER that trains faculty, staff, and students to build, customize, and use open textbooks.

The BCcampus Writing Guidelines for Articles and Web Content and BCcampus Open Education Style Guide, along with the attached style sheet [Word file], were referenced during the copy editing and proofreading phases of this guide.

To ensure that standard barriers are addressed for maximum access by as many readers as possible, this guide meets the criteria laid out in the Checklist for Accessibility—including an Accessibility Statement—and is flagged as “Accessible” in the B.C. Open Textbook Collection.

This guide does not come with an index. Instead, use the search field located in the top-right of each page in the online version to locate a specific topic.