OJC Receives Open Educational Resources Grant
Description: OJC has been awarded a $30,000 grant to implement open educational resources. For select courses, students would no longer have to purchase books or other materials.
OJC Receives Open Educational Resources Grant
By: Sarah Petramala
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ..............................
LA JUNTA — Otero Junior College’s grant proposal for an Open Educational Resources Grant has been selected for an award of $30,000 for 2020-2021. This grant is funded by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education (CCHE).
Open Education Resources are teaching and learning materials that can be used free of cost. These resources are often created by individuals or companies that choose not to copyright their productions in order to prevent inaccessibility due to cost. OERs offer opportunities for changes in instruction and allows teachers to design their own curriculum and content. In sharing these teaching tools and strategies, educators will be able to network their strengths and improve the quality of education for their students.
OJC plans to use these grant funds to go to pay for faculty stipends to complete OER professional development trainings. Additionally, 20 faculty members will have the opportunity to serve on the OER Development Committee. This committee will help develop and learn how to design OERs. OJC’s goal is to have 20 completely OER courses available to students by fall of 2021. This number is in addition to a few courses that are already being taught with open resource material by Dol Khanal and Mark Korbitz. This would positively impact students, as they would not have to purchase materials for their courses.
According to Cheryl Reeves, OER Grant Lead and Chair of Education eLearning and Assessment, “This grant will also allow us the possibility to of design course content in D2L (Desire2Learn, our platform used to manage course content, grades, student courses, etc.). This would enable faculty to access all information for other courses taught at OJC. If Mr. Khanal uploads his college algebra content to D2L, all other math instructors would be able to use and access that information for their own courses. This grant supports our president’s initiatives and strategic plans in closing the economic divide in higher education.”
Approximately $1.4 million dollars were requested in these applications with only $840,000 dollars of available funding. The CCHE has attempted to fund as many projects as possible this year in an effort to continue the momentum around the OER movement in Colorado and foster the growth of OER throughout the state.
Timothy Alvarez, OJC President, stated, “The Colorado Open Educational Resources Grant Program was exceedingly competitive and the number and caliber of the applications submitted was impressive. This demonstrates the level of interest in OER as an innovative and promising practice for addressing affordability and student success in higher education. We are very excited about this opportunity that will not only contribute to our progress but will also be financially beneficial to students. One of our goals is to provide a high quality education for students, no matter their financial background, and to close the economic divide. We are committed to provide as many educational materials needed for their courses with no additional cost beyond tuition.”
For more information, please contact Cheryl Reeves at cheryl.reeves@ojc.edu or 719-384- 6984.
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