What is an OER (Open Educational Resource) and is it Right for You?

Let's find out together!  This coming Tuesday from 2:30-3:30pm at the CTLE, our resident expert Alisa Cooper and her contagious excitement levels are going to help us fully understand OER's and the Maricopa Millions initiative.  

Spiraling textbook costs, outdated materials and many other student success driven issues are making OER's popular, but are they right for you?  If that question is one that you are asking right now, then we would love to have you join the discussion on Tuesday!

Agenda

• Quick Announcements on OER and Maricopa Millions
• Maricopa Millions Initiative Steering Committee: https://maricopa.instructure.com/courses/811971/wiki/maricopa-millions-steering-team
• Maricopa Millions website: http://maricopa.edu/oer
• Call for Proposals - Phase II (see below)  
• Finding OER - search various sites to mine resources for individual courses

Creative Commons

• Creative Commons helps you share your knowledge and creativity with the world. Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.
• Search Creative Commons: http://search.creativecommons.org/  Search for creative work through sources like Google and Flickr right here.

Finding OER

• Find OER: Diigo Links: http://goo.gl/nT8yBg

OER (Open Educational Resources) hold great promise for reducing costs and increasing access to required course materials. Community colleges around the country (Washington, California, Virginia) have joined in with national efforts to increase the production and use of OER materials. Washington’s OER project saved students over $1.25 million in just the 2011-12 academic year, and over $5.5 million since 2011.  

The main goal of the Maricopa Millions Open Education Resources (OER) Project is to reduce educational costs for students. Spending less money on textbooks and materials will foster greater access to materials for students, which may enable them to stay on track with completing their courses.

The Maricopa Millions OER Project includes developing a strategic, sustainable OER infrastructure that would include: awareness, professional development, OER development and technical support, marketing and technical structure. In order for OER to be successful at MCCCD, we have established an OER strategic planning and implementation team to establish and oversee specific OER outcomes over the next 5 years.

The driving objective for the project is to save MCCCD students $5 Million Dollars over the next five years through the use of OER materials.  The sooner we begin, the sooner the students can realize the savings.

This Maricopa Millions OER project, through an internal grant process, supports the adoption, adaptation, and development of complete OER course materials for high enrollment courses in the MCCCD.  The final product will be OER course materials that can be easily adopted and modified by other faculty (including adjuncts) teaching that course.

A statement of interest is requested by 5pm on Tuesday, February 25, 2014. If submitted, this information will be used to introduce faculty who may have interests in creating the same course in an effort to encourage collaboration. The statement of interest is not required but strongly encouraged.  

Proposals are due by 5pm on Wednesday, March 26, 2014. Group proposals will be accepted.

Grant proposals are now being accepted for OER Development Grants. For more information regarding the OER Development Grant program, please visit our website.

This program is open to residential faculty teaching at the MCCCD and will be targeting specific courses in Phase 2 of the grant program.