Opening our minds to the power of OER

This week at the League of Innovations conference, we felt a collective thrill as Tidewater Community College showed us what is possible when using Open Educational Resources (OER). They have established a "Z degree" in Business Administration, meaning that there are no cost of textbooks associated with the classes required to fulfill this degree. Tidewater partnered with Lumen Learning to do extensive preparation and training so that the faculty were equipped to develop OER courses with the support of the library and administrators. All faculty who participated did so voluntarily. Nobody was forced to design an OER course. Their process included clearly identifying learning objectives and aligning content and activities to meet those objectives. As Linda Williams, Prof. of Business Administration, stated they were no longer teaching Chapter 6 because it's between Chapter 4 and 5. Faculty were able to more intentionally design their courses to meet their learning outcomes. What has been the results? Compared to their traditional counterparts, Z courses have higher retention and higher student success rates. And, students are saving $2500 over the course of their degree (a quarter of the cost). 

With the ever increasing OER initiatives across the country, a growing wealth of quality resources are available to faculty. To learn more about OER, check out OER Resources for Faculty.

After attending the session by Tidewater Community College, faculty members from Business - Karen Hines, Kris Ricker-Choleva and Michele Cabral; Math - Rebecca Targrove ; and Economics - Jessica Hill came together with Karin Moyano-Camihort, Dean of Online Programs, me - the Instructional Designer, and the new Dean of the Library, Mary Dixey to start discussing how we could initiate a similar endeavor on our campus.

We need creative and innovative faculty members, library support, instructional design and training support and substantive support from the administration. Join the conversation!