The Brightly Illuminated Path: Facilitating an OER Program at Community College

The Objective Open Educational Resources are increasingly becoming more popular on college campuses. The astronomical increase in the cost of textbooks has provided strong motivation for an “Open Access” revolution. Collaborative materials made available online across the curriculum have offered richly rewarding alternatives to the use of traditional materials. Noted educator, Steven Bell (2012), posed an essential question, “What’s next for the OER movement as academic librarians continue to take a leadership role at their institutions to initiate these alternate text book projects?” Librarians at Queensborough Community College have accepted their role in this movement, illustrating Bell’s ideas. ” There is no doubt that these programs will continue to grow at all types of institutions. In many states the community college systems are leading the way” (pp. 1-4). Facilitating a Grant Program At Queensborough Community College, to facilitate a grant program, a team of librarians, Sheila Beck, William Blick, Sandra Marcus, and Constance Williams, formed an OER committee. Financial awards were granted to faculty developing OERs, including innovations such as the development of an Open Source Textbook to be used for a mathematics course. Funding was provided by a percentage of the library budget allocated for textbook purchases. The librarian team promoted the initiative through a marketing campaign that included mass emails, newsletter articles, a poster session at an ACRL/NY conference, and several meetings and workshops, including topics such as copyright laws and the new university repository. The benefits of Open Educational Resources are tri-fold. First, they offer inexpensive text material for students; second, they allow faculty more control and choice in the selection and provision of course content, and finally, they add to the pool of knowledge which makes up the fabric of academia. There are implications, too, for the professional development trajectories of professors. In a valuable article Don Olcott (2012) explains that, “In the future, research will need to examine the concept of open educational practices (OEP) and OER issues relevant to faculty incentives and career advancement in the university.” (p.283) In addition to being of educational value to both students and instructors, the grant program at QCC may also provide opportunities for professional advancement. Olcott (2012) further assures us that, “The potential for open educational resources to transform the global educational landscape is immense. OERs have emerged as one of the most powerful resources to transverse the global education landscape (along with the World Wide Web and the Internet) in the past century.”(p.283) Fasimpaur (2012, p.37) outlines principles for a successful OER program: * “1. Start with your curriculum goals, and involve teachers from the start. * 2. Offer high quality professional development–early and often. * 3. Find the OERs that are right for your students. * 4. Use OERs to customize curricula and differentiate learning.” (p.37) Although these principles were originally designed for a K-12 setting, they can work for a community college as well, and the OER Committee attempted to utilize them to enhance their program. After the pilot grant project was completed with awards announced, the OER team hosted an Academic Affairs sponsored program with grant-winning participants discussing their projects. Guest speaker at this “Campus Conversation” was CUNY Scholarly Communications Librarian, Megan Wacha, who described the benefits of OERs along with the CUNY-wide institutional repository, Academic Works. Another speaker and major contributor to the OER project was Professor Patrick Wallach, whose online, open source textbook, Mathematics is entirely accessible in Academic Works On any community college campus OERs seem to be highly valued, but particularly so at a school like QCC, an urban campus that serves many nontraditional students who lack financial resources.