The Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG) has created a new Open Educational Resources (OER) training opportunity for faculty throughout the state of Georgia. The TCSG OpenTech Training (OTT) provides faculty the opportunity to develop a course by applying the theories and resources behind the open education initiative in a mentored learning environment. The goal of the program is to significantly lower the cost of required course materials (e.g. textbooks) for students enrolled at a college within the Technical College System of Georgia while maintaining or improving student learning outcomes and satisfaction with the required materials. The training supports the open educational resource movement by contributing to the growing body of OER available to the global higher education community.
The training consists of 18 weeks of guided instruction beginning with an OER Overview and follows up with topics surrounding Copyright and Creative Commons licensing, Researching and Evaluating OER, Accessibility, Universal Design for Learning, and Course Design and Development. During the initial cohort in the Fall of 2019, 20 faculty from 10 TCSG colleges completed the training and 18 courses were developed using primarily OER and/or library resources. This first round of OER-developed courses has the potential to impact 5,315 students of cohort-only adopters but this number will grow exponentially as more colleges adopt and utilize OER for their courses. The potential total savings for all 10 colleges for cohort-only adopters of these 18 available courses is $694,000 with a prospective savings of $1,005,903.76 if the system can attain a 15% adoption rate among all 22 colleges.
From a faculty perspective, the end-of-course survey showed that all responding faculty would highly recommend the training to colleagues. Feedback from faculty displayed a positive experience for those participating in the training; “Phenomenal opportunity to collaborate with instructors across the state with the goal of making courses more competitive, more beneficial to the students, and more engaging from an OER perspective.” Faculty also felt after the training they were more comfortable recognizing and discussing OER related topics. “I really enjoyed working with my colleagues on the OER course development. This training gave us a platform to know the ins and outs of OER course development.” The positive impact of the training is expanded for faculty who will take this experience and knowledge back to their programs for expanding OER possibilities to other courses. “I thoroughly enjoyed this experience and have continued to work on OER course development for my program. Thank you so much!”
“Phenomenal opportunity to collaborate with instructors across the state with the goal of making courses more competitive, more beneficial to the students, and more engaging from an OER perspective.”
Faculty feedback from end-of-course survey
Overall the initial cohort of the OpenTech Training was a sound investment and a second cohort of faculty are currently enrolled in the training through October of 2020.
More Resources:
- OpenTech Tracker: This tracker aims to identify free and low-cost materials in use at colleges within the Technical College System of Georgia to provide fellow instructors with additional Open Educational Resource information.
- Overview of TCSG’s OpenTech Training Program (PDF file of a slide presentation)