This document discusses engaging with open educational resources (OER). It summarizes the SBCTC Open Course Library project, which aims to design and share 81 high-enrollment courses using OER to improve completion rates and lower textbook costs for students. The first 42 courses were released in 2011 and saved students over $1 million in textbook costs in the first year. Lessons from the project include using collaborative tools and building open sharing into teaching workflows and technologies going forward. The document provides recommendations for where to find openly licensed materials like images and videos as well as search for open educational resources.

1. Engaging with
Open Educational Resources
Tom Caswell
Open Education Policy Associate
State Board for Community & Technical Colleges
Image credit: Marc Wathieu CC BY-NC-SA

2. The Internet changes everything
Anyone can create and
deliver almost anything to
anyone for almost no cost.
Internet + Digital
Resources +
Open License

3. September 2007
Cape Town Open Education
Declaration
“…we have an opportunity to dramatically improve
the lives of hundreds of millions of people around
the world through freely available, high-
quality, locally relevant educational and learning
opportunities.”

4. Where do we start?
Photo credit: loop_oh CC BY-ND
http://whyopenedmatters.org

5. Strategic Technology Plan
 Strategy I:
Create a single, system-wide suite of online
teaching and learning tools that provides all
Washington students with easy access to
“anywhere, anytime” learning.
 http://www.sbctc.edu/general/a_strategictechplan.aspx

6. June 2010
SBCTC Open Policy
All digital software, educational resources and
knowledge produced through competitive
grants, offered through and/or managed by the
SBCTC, will carry a Creative Commons
Attribution License.
 http://www.sbctc.edu/general/admin/Tab_9_Open_
Licensing_Policy.pdf

7. Textbook Affordability
English Composition I
50,000+ enrollments / year
x $100 textbook
$5+ Million every year

8. Affordances of Open
OER allows you to:
• Reuse
• Redistribute
And sometimes:
• Revise
• Remix
Photo credit: mag3737 CC BY-NC-SA

9. Watch. Practice.
Learn almost anything for free.

12. The Open Course Library
Funded: $1.2 million
 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
 Washington State Legislature

13.  Goals of the Open Course Library
 Design and share 81 high enrollment, gatekeeper courses
 Improve course completion rates
 Lower textbook costs for students (<$30)
 Provide new resources for faculty to use in their courses
 Fully engage our colleges in the global open educational
resources discussion.

14. Open Course Library
 Phase 1: 42 courses
 http://opencourselibrary.org
 http://saylor.org
 Phase 2 : 39 courses
 Available Spring 2013

15. The first 42 courses were
released October 31, 2011
Over 80 media mentions worldwide
Over 25,000 visits from 125 countries to
http://opencourselibrary.org

16. Initial Impact
In the first year, students will save
$1.1 million in textbook costs
That’s more than we spent to develop the
courses…

17. Lessons Learned
Phase 1 Faculty Concerns:
 Many were unfamiliar with ANGEL LMS
 No way to compare work between course teams
 Too many websites to keep track of
Phase 2 Adjustments:
 Using Google Docs to collaborate & share as we go
 All project information in one Google Site

18. Next Steps
Driving Open Course Library Course Adoptions
 Regional conferences and workshops
 New faculty trainings
Building open sharing into existing teaching workflows
and technologies
 Next LMS will have “open sharing” feature
 Explore open sharing via Tegrity
 Working with system librarians to track and
promote open content

19. Finding Open Resources

20. Great places to find openly licensed
images, video, clipart, etc:
search.creativecommons.org.

21. Where can I search specifically for
Open Educational Resources (OER)?
• opencourselibrary.org
• oercommons.org/oer
• Connexions (cnx.org)
• saylor.org
• oerglue.com/courses

22. Questions?
Please visit:
http://whyopenedmatters.org
http://creativecommons.org
http://bit.ly/openedpledge
Tom Caswell
tcaswell@sbctc.edu
http://tomcaswell.com