The Open Learning division of Thompson Rivers University supports open educational practices through delivering a large portfolio of undergraduate and graduate online courses; creating, developing, and using OER and open textbooks; creating and delivering open courses through OERu; providing open access to courses and programs; and carrying out open assessment practices using Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR). To support the development and maintenance of open learning courses, the Open Learning Curriculum Development Unit built a database permitting distributed access to user-entered transactional data about course development for sharing with other individuals and work teams. The database, known as Data For The People (D4P), was designed to replace work silos, individual pockets of unshared information, multiple spreadsheets, meetings and emails with one openly shared source of information available to all stakeholders. The presenters will demonstrate key elements of this system, its underlying philosophy of open sharing of information in a work community setting, and ideas for future development toward increasing openness of the data.
