THE PROJECT:
It comes as no surprise to anyone in higher education that textbook prices have been on the rise, but as seen in this chart[1], they have been rising much more rapidly than the prices of other products (faster, even, than tuition costs), and in fact increased by 35% in the last five years alone.[2] A student at the community college will pay easily as much, if not more, for a new textbook for a class than they paid in tuition for that same class.[3] In order to ease the financial burden on students, many institutions are turning to Open Educational Resources (OERs) – educational materials that are “copyright-free or have been released under a copyright license that permits others to reuse, revise, remix and redistribute them”[4] - to reduce costs to students. MCCCD has, just this past year, launched its own formal efforts with the “Maricopa Millions” project.
I've been fortunate enough to have been granted a sabbatical leave for the 2015-2016 academic year to focus on not only the creation of OER content, but also support materials for other faculty so that they can also create content on their own.
I've been fortunate enough to have been granted a sabbatical leave for the 2015-2016 academic year to focus on not only the creation of OER content, but also support materials for other faculty so that they can also create content on their own.
The three main areas of this project are:
- creating high-quality OERs for Economics and for other disciplines
- assessing which content-creation tools allow for the broadest possible student accessibility to the content, while still being easy enough for faculty to use
- supporting faculty and encouraging them to create open-use materials by developing samples, documentation, and training materials.
[1] Kingkade, Tyler. "College Textbook Prices Increasing Faster Than Tuition And Inflation." The Huffington Post. Web. 04 Jan. 2013.
[2] Morath, Eric. "Inflation Is Tame Unless You Eat Bacon or Smoke Cigarettes." The Wall Street Journal. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.
[3] For example, a new Economics text currently runs about $250, while a 3-credit ECN class also costs $250.
[4] "OER- Maricopa Millions." Maricopa Community Colleges, Web. 25 July 2014.
[2] Morath, Eric. "Inflation Is Tame Unless You Eat Bacon or Smoke Cigarettes." The Wall Street Journal. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.
[3] For example, a new Economics text currently runs about $250, while a 3-credit ECN class also costs $250.
[4] "OER- Maricopa Millions." Maricopa Community Colleges, Web. 25 July 2014.