Abstract 1206 Lessons learned creating an Open Education Resource for a Cell & Molecular Biology course

In recent years, institutions have expanded their commitment to increasing the use of Open Education Resources (OER). These free resources reduce barriers for students to access their educational materials and thus creates a more equitable learning environment. Interestingly, while cell biology is a foundational course in every biology program, there is no major Open Educational Resource that can be found that serves this kind of course. Thus, we have recently written a new OER textbook for use in our cell/molecular biology classrooms. We will share our lessons learned in the resource acquisition and writing process. In particular, we will cover topics on selecting an appropriate Creative Commons license, the importance of high quality figures and how we found our illustrator, the time investment required to write and manage our project, the infrastructure for publication and maintenance we acquired for our resource, and where to start if interested. We hope these lessons learned help reduce the barrier for other authors to engage in this important work, especially as there are few OER materials in biochemistry and related fields. UBC Okanagan students via the Aspire-2040 Learning Transformations Fund and Oregon State University's ECampus Affordable Learning Grant (2020-2021).