Spotlight on Open Educational Resources in Medical Education with Dr. Teresa Chan Online
Join medical education expert Dr. Teresa Chan, Dean & Vice President, School of Medicine, Toronto Metropolitan University to discuss the topic of OER and Medical Education. This is a 2026 Open Education Week event. Come celebrate with us.
Open educational resources (OER) are expanding access to medical knowledge in meaningful ways, they support flexible learning, timely knowledge sharing, and broader educational reach, as well as diversification of medical education materials. From podcasts to scholarly blogs, these open resources are becoming an important complement to traditional medical education teaching resources like lectures and textbooks. However, with the opportunity of open resources that support medical education comes a responsibility for evaluation. Medical learners, educators, and clinicians must approach medical open educational resources with a discerning and critical lens, ensuring the information they use is credible, evidence-informed, and relevant to practice.
This 1 hour Keynote session with Dr. Chan will be followed by a short 30 minute panel discussion with TMU students involved with creating OER.
The moderators for this event are Melissa Helwig, Head Medical Librarian and Ann Ludbrook.
Student Speakers are:
Caitlin Cosgrove, Graduate student, Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing. Caitlin has worked on various Nursing OERs.
Emanuel Tessema- Undergraduate 4th year student in Nutrition and Food. They have worked on the Anti-Black Racism (ABR) Project in Dietetics with Professor Enza Gucciardi & Mikahelia Wellington.
Sherana Syed, Undergraduate 4th year student in Nutrition and Food.. They have worked on the Anti-Black Racism Project with Professor Enza Gucciardi & Mikahelia Wellington.
Dr. Teresa M. Chan is the Founding Dean of the Toronto Metropolitan University School of Medicine as well as TMU’s Vice-President, Medical Affairs.
Dr. Chan is a leader in new methods for teaching and learning, including technology-enhanced learning and serious games. She has been an advocate, researcher, and contributor for the free open access medical education movement (#FOAMed). Importantly she is a staunch advocate for open education resource creation - and she has led and founded #FOAMed outlets including CanadiEM.org, ALiEM.com. She has led teams in academic blogging, podcasting, and video creation. She has empowered learners and teachers alike to harness these technologies for education purposes.
- Date:
- Thursday, March 5, 2026
- Time:
- 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
- Time Zone:
- Eastern Time - US & Canada (change)
- campus:
- Online
- Online:
- This is an online event. Event URL will be sent via registration email.
- Audience:
- Faculty /Instructors Graduate Students Law Medicine TMU Community Undergraduates
- Categories:
- Create New Knowledge Innovate Knowledge Mobilization Publish & Share Your Research Software Tools
The Open Educational Resources (OER) Grant Program is supported by the Dean of Libraries and reflects the Library’s commitment to supporting the creation, adaptation and adoption of Open Educational Resources for use in the classroom. OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.
OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge (Hewlett Foundation). For students, Open Educational Resources are a welcome alternative to the high cost of textbooks and educational materials which can be a barrier to learning. For faculty members, Open Educational Resources provide the flexibility to adapt course material to the course and pedagogical style rather than adapt the course and pedagogy to a static resource.
These grants advance the University’s priorities to foster an innovation ecosystem and ensure excellence in student learning experiences, and build on the TMU Library’s digital initiatives, expertise in Open Access and Open Education Resource publishing and dissemination, and academic priorities of access and openness.
In (2025) we had three types of OER Grant opportunities. Two of these grants were Partnership grants, where the Library offers a grant in partnership with another unit in the University. In 2026 so far, the TMU School of Medicine and TMU Libraries are pleased to announce a joint 2026 OER Grant that has an application deadline of Monday, March 16, 2026.
