Last June, Achieving the Dream (ATD) announced the largest initiative of its kind to develop degree programs using high quality open educational resources (OER) at 38 community colleges in 13 states.  The program is designed to help remove financial roadblocks that can derail students’ progress and to spur other changes in teaching and learning and course design that will increase the likelihood of degree and certificate completion.   Grantee colleges have been busy this summer and fall developing OER courses and planning the delivery of their OER Degree programs with cross-functional teams of stakeholders including faculty, librarians, administrators, and other staff.   Grant partners Lumen Learning, the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER), and SRI International are providing technical assistance, community of practice, and research support to grantees Come and hear from a panel of four college leaders on their early successes, lesson learned, and challenges ahead in rolling out OER Degree programs to students over the next few years. Topics include fostering faculty and administrator engagement, effective professional development, creating awareness among students, measuring outcomes, and creating sustainable policies. Panelists: • Clea Andreadis, Vice-Provost, Bunker Hill College, MA • Mark Johnson, North Campus Language Arts Department Chair, San Jacinto College, TX • Cynthia Lofaso, Psychology Professor, Central Virginia Community College, VA • Carlos Lopez, Vice-President of Academic Affairs, Santa Ana College,

1. OER Degree College
Panel
Unless otherwise indicated, this presentation is licensed CC-BY 4.0
Nov 4, 2016, 3:15pm EST

2. Agenda
• OER Degree Overview
• Bunker Hill Community College
• San Jacinto Community College
• Central Virginia Community College
• Santa Ana Community College
• Questions

3. Welcome
Carlos Lopez
VP Academic Affairs
Santa Ana College
Mark Johnson, Dept. Chair
English & Modern Languages
San Jacinto Community College
Moderator:
Una Daly
Director, CCCOER
Guest Speaker:
Richard Sebastian, ATD
Clea Andreadis,
Associate Provost
Bunker Hill College
Cynthia Lofaso
Psychology Professor
Central Virginia Community College

4. OER Degree Overview
• Faculty have redesigned courses to use
OER for an entire pathway leading to a
degree or a CTE certificate.
• Student savings up to 25%
• Enhanced pedagogy
• Learning & retention
• Increased faculty choices
• Growing open course repositories

5. OER Degree Examples
• Virginia’s Z-23 Project (2015)
• Achieving the Dream OER Degrees (2016)
• California’s Zero-Textbook-Cost Degrees
(2017)

6. Achieving the Dream
• 38 colleges in 13 states (2016-2018)
–Partners: Lumen, CCCOER, SRI International
• Technical Assistance
• Community of Practice
• Research on outcomes (persistence,
grades, completion) and cost analysis

7. Clea Andreadis
Associate Provost

8. BHCC OER Degree Initiative
Another revolution is brewing in Boston….
✓ BHCC enrolls approximately 14,000 students.
▪ 67% students of color
▪ 57% Pell grant eligible
▪ 1,000 international students
✓ Grant focus on General Concentration Degree (over 4,000 enrolled
students annually)
✓ At the end of the grant BHCC will offer over 80 sections of 32
different courses impacting at least 1,800 students each
semester.

9. ▶ Provide opportunities for faculty to deepen
their curricular development and broaden
their technological skills.
▶ Develop OER that is aligned with BHCC’s
institutional focus on culturally inclusive
pedagogy and place based learning.
▶ Reduce textbook costs for our students and
promote student success.
Initiative has 3 goals

10. ▶ Strong cross functional leadership team in place
▶ Four cohorts of approximately seven faculty each will
engage in the same scope of work, which will be
divided into four phases –
◦ training, design, implementation and assessment
▶ Each cohort will participate in a set of professional
development activities including a two-day OER
Institute, and have access to resources which are
housed in a Moodle course shell
▶ Once the course is built faculty will offer the course
and then assess its efficacy.
How are we doing it?

11. ❖ How do we drive students to OER sections?
❖ How should OER sections be identified in
registration and other materials to promote
enrollment?
❖ What will the business model be as we move
forward?
❖ Identifying culturally inclusive material is
posing a problem for faculty.
Identified challenges – help
wanted!

12. Questions? Great ideas?
Clea Andreadis
Associate Provost
Bunker Hill Community College
ctandrea@bhcc.mass.edu

13. Mark Johnson
Department Chair, English and Modern Languages
OER Degree Project Lead
Known Unknowns:
OER Degree Development
First Six Months

14. OER Faculty developer expectations
• What we did: we recruited faculty “cheerleaders”
for change
• What we didn’t do: we didn’t understand what
these “cheerleaders” expected OER courses to look
like
• Our solution: we provided more workshops and
one-on-one meetings between Lumen Learning
and faculty developers

15. Access to OER in the Classroom
• What we did: we thought we had enough
computer classrooms during our pilot OER classes
• What we didn’t do: we underestimated computer
classroom availability, how our Wi-Fi load capacity
would be taxed, and how expensive Wi-Fi load
improvements would be
• Our Solution: we’re intending to revamp our
Interactive Learning Center to be our designated
OER building

16. Equity and access to OER courses
• What we did: we rapidly developed and adopted
OER courses in order to scale a full associate
degree in General Studies in about 6 months
• What we didn’t do: we didn’t grasp right away
how to make OER courses available to students
who probably need OER the most
• Our solution: we worked with our Student Services
and Financial Aid offices to identify Pell Grant
students and first-generation college students for
reserved seats in OER courses

17. Cynthia Lofaso
Psychology Professor

18. Central Virginia
Community College
Faculty Driven OER

19. CVCC Students
• 6100 students
• 32% receive federal or state financial aid
• 52% from underrepresented populations
• 30% dual enrollment
• 67% part time

20. The Beginning
• Faculty Driven
• Biology OER sections
• VCCS Z23 Grant
• One-year grant to support the VCCS’s goal of scaling Z-
Degrees to all 23 VCCS colleges
• Developed courses for AA&S in General Studies and Business
Administration
• Unable to complete business administration due to Accounting
class issues

21. Achieving the Dream
• CVCC part of the VCCS consortium
• Virginia Community College Consortium (Central Virginia
Community College, Germanna Community College, Lord
Fairfax Community College, Mountain Empire Community
College, Northern Virginia Community College, Tidewater
Community College)
• CVCC participating as a research institute
• Identified cohorts for comparison research

22. Grant Structure at CVCC
• Faculty Stipends
• Small stipend for faculty who are developing an OER
course.
• Faculty Training
• Smaller stipend for faculty who take Pathways (OER
training) and adopt an already developed OER course.
• Professional Development

23. Short Term Impact
• Courses
• Spring 2016 – 10 courses, 19 sections
• Fall 2016 – 16 courses, 33 sections
• Students – 1001 unduplicated Since Spring 2016
• Cost savings of $150,000 plus for students

24. ATD Degree Goals
• Certificate in General Education (1 year)
• Associate of Arts and Science (AA&S) in General
Studies (2 years)
• Associate of Arts and Science (AA&S) in Science (2
years)

25. Obstacles
• Faculty Training
• Prep time – especially for adjunct faculty
• Workload/time commitment
• Lack of additional course materials
• Mistrust of OER model
• Specific course concerns
• Modern literature
• Accounting

26. Carlos Lopez
VP Academic Affairs

27. Santa Ana College OER Initiative:
Textbook Affordability Pathway – “TAP into SAC”
•Large urban college in Orange
County, California
–60,000 students per year
–79% students of color
–66% Hispanic/Latin@
Hispanic Serving Institution
–73% of incoming students are eligible for
the California Community College Board
of Governors Fee Waiver (BOGW)
–Approximately 30% of students do not
own a pc or tablet to complete their
coursework

28. Santa Ana AtD OER
•Create two Degree
Pathways: Business and
Liberal Studies Transfer
Degrees
•Build upon OER work
started in 2011
–Now offering over 80 OER
course sections serving over
2500 students per semester
–Disciplines across business,
communication, mathematics,
performing arts, & sciences
–1st Year Goal: Increase OER
course sections to 120 per
semester

29. Success Factors
•5-Years of OER development
and adoption
–Excellent Partner in Lumen
Learning
•Faculty Champions
•Staged incentives for faculty
to develop or adopt OER
•Regional OER Summit
•Supportive Independent
Campus Bookstore
•Students can search schedule
for OER sections
•Digital Dons Laptop Loan
Program

30. Challenges
•Faculty buy-in in a few
specific GE areas
•Faculty concerns with
students opting for OER
tagged classes over
traditional textbook classes
•Coordinating the research
work related to the AtD
OER initiative given a new
research structure at our
college

31. Questions for Panelists

32. Thank you for joining us today!
Una Daly, unatdaly@oeconsortium.org