1) The document discusses barriers to degree completion for community college students such as emotional doubts, time constraints from family/work responsibilities, and financial difficulties paying for courses/materials. 2) It outlines ways colleges are addressing these barriers, including shortening pathways to degrees, improving advising/connection to increase belonging, and improving financial literacy. 3) While open educational resources (OER) can help with the financial barrier by reducing textbook costs, on their own they will not transform education - colleges need broader strategies to improve retention.

1. Wendy Swyt
Highline College
Wendy Swyt, Highline College

2. As we are moving to an era of no community college
student left behind…
Colleges are now paying more attention to the barriers that
stand in the way of degree completion:
1. Emotional: As Rebecca Cox indicates in her book College Fear
Factor, students face significant self-doubts about their place
and potential in college courses. They often engage in self-
sabotage as a way to address these fears.
2. Time: many of our students are juggling family issues and job
responsibilities while taking courses– they are not living in
dorms and lining up for keggers on weekends.
3. Finances: the window for financial aid has tightened. Our
students face choices between rent, food or books.
Wendy Swyt, Highline College

3. Ways we are addressing these barriers…
1. Pathways – we need to shorten pathways (4 levels of pre-
college English = fewer students make it to college level) and
clearly articulate pathways to degree completion. On a micro-
level we need to use assessment and teaching that builds clear
pathways for students through our courses.
2. Belonging and connection- students need to feel empowered
and invested in their courses and in the college through
intrusive advising, flipped classrooms, etc.
3. Financial literacy – if students can’t afford courses or
materials, the first two can’t be implemented and the
student is gone before the first assessment. Lowering
tuition costs, micro-grants, etc. have had great impact.
Wendy Swyt, Highline College

4. Why all this blather? How does it
relate to OER?
 Well, minimally. OER will help us address #3 in both
slides – student financial need.
My point is that despite the Youtube videos espousing its
democratizing force – The equity! The access! – OER
takes place in a context of needs and strategies.
In its current state, OER will not transform education. It
will affect retention in that students won’t need to
choose between groceries and a math textbook.
Wendy Swyt, Highline College

5. Other than easing student financial need, what
are some other benefits of OER?
 Potential to decenter canonical textbook knowledge – especially for K-
12, videos, journals and images of the Japanese internment can
supplement social studies texts that gloss over the experiences of
people of color in a society that privileges white experience.
 Potential for collaboration – faculty can build more malleable, relevant,
current textbooks together.
 Potential for different presentation of material in a course – video,
hypertext, audio, images – that is more readily accessible to different
learning styles and a technologically adept generation.
Wendy Swyt, Highline College

6. What are the drawbacks of OER?
For students:
 (Older) students with limited technological literacy may
feel more out of place than they already do.
 OER materials might be less transparent than a textbook.
Students still need navigation tools so that they can see a
course, it’s basic structure and intent.
For faculty:
 Time suck– it would be less time for me to take my own
photo of a butterfly than search for a creative commons
image and upload it from Flickr.
 Like Powerpoint, it can be a fancy way of offering the same
old, same old.
Wendy Swyt, Highline College

7. A big drawback for me…
As someone in the English department who teaches more
“malleable”, less textbook-dependent courses, I couldn’t find
anything relevant for a children’s literature course or on
women artists in the 20th century. I think the materials that
I’d use are heavily copyrighted in a traditional sense –
different from a beginning college math or science textbook.
At this point, college librarians might want to market the
“OER movement” heavily to faculty who teach the courses
that seem to lend themselves most easily to OER. I think I
can save my students money in other less time-consuming
ways. 
Wendy Swyt, Highline College