2021 Langara Open Student Scholar Prize

We are now accepting submissions for the 2021 Langara Open Student Scholar Prize. This prize, created by the Langara Library, Open Langara, and the Langara Institutional Repository (The LaIR), celebrates exemplary work being done by Langara students and offers them the opportunity to share their work in the Langara Institutional Repository (LaIR). View the 2020 winning submissions.

The deadline for submissions is April 19, 2021.

If you are an instructor interested in nominating student work from one of your classes, simply contact the student and let them know you endorse their submission, should they choose to enter the contest, and provide the link to the prize info and submission form.

Institutional repositories like The LaIR provide a platform for scholars to make their work accessible to a wide audience, enabling knowledge sharing and creation on a larger scale. The LaIR captures unique digital output from Langara’s students, faculty, staff, and community and provides a digital space to store and share scholarly production, projects, learning objects, art, and any number of digitized or digitally born resources.

Awards

Prizes will be awarded to the top 3 projects evaluated by our team of judges. All winning projects will be published in the Open Student Scholar Prize Collection in the Langara Institutional Repository (LaIR).

Winners will also be awarded a gift certificate:

• First place: $250
• First Runner Up: $150
• Second Runner Up: $100

Eligibility

To be eligible for the Langara Open Student Scholar Prize, students must:

• Be currently enrolled at Langara College during the Spring 2021 academic semester.
• Have completed a project for a class that required library research no earlier than Spring 2019 (projects must not be more than 2 years old). Course assignments, research papers, or other scholarly or creative projects are accepted for consideration. Project can be in any format or medium.
• Agree to publishing their submission to the Langara Institutional Repository.

This contest is open to both individual and group projects. Nomination or recommendation from a faculty member is not required but welcomed.

Completed application includes:  

1. The final version of your completed project, including a bibliography, works cited, or references page.
2. Atypical project formats (i.e. visual art, films, multimedia presentations) must be accompanied by a statement that describes the research and creation process including a bibliography.
3. Personal data gathered through the online form (name, student number, class taken, etc.)
4. A short statement (250-500 words) about what open education, open access, and open scholarship means to you, your project, and/or post-secondary education at large.

Criteria

Projects submitted for this award must be exemplary work, largely free of spelling and grammatical errors, and completed as a requirement of their studies at Langara College. They must include some element of research and analysis.

The prizes will be awarded primarily on the quality of the project and the short statement about the impact of open education.

The judging committee will consist of representatives from the Library, the English Department, and the Scholarly Activities Steering Committee.

Entries should be proofread before submission but may be copyedited before submission to the LaIR.

Entries will be judged using the following rubric: