The U.S. Department of Education awarded over $6 million in its third and latest round of Open Textbook Pilot grants. Two out of the four awards led by public community college consortia in California and New Jersey are centered on Hispanic and minority-serving institutions respectively. LOUIS, Louisiana’s state library network, focused on high school dual-enrollment, and the University of Texas, Arlington leading a multi-state university consortia for professional transportation studies received the other awards. Full summaries of awards are available on the program’s website.
California Consortium for Equitable Change in Hispanic Serving Institutions OER (CC ECHO) – $1,999,924
CC ECHO proposes to implement an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) framework for Open Educational Resources (OER) to design 20 high impact general education courses. Led by West Hills College District, consortium members include College of Marin, Alan Hancock College and College of the Canyon, all four Hispanice Serving Institutions. The grant targets faculty and students at California Community Colleges, federally recognized Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI), emerging HSIs, and national colleges and universities.
Guided by leading practitioners in the field, CC ECHO will develop culturally relevant OER and training materials for faculty on delivering that OER. The consortium will host curated and created material on multiple openly licensed platforms. Mini-grants for subject matter experts and students will be made available to provide a wide set of view points in OER materials.
The program anticipates serving 1,160 students with an estimated textbook cost savings of $2,214,400 within the first three years. Robust dissemination efforts to engage Hispanic Serving Institutions and emergent one across the nation including urban and rural will be undertaken to grow the impact beyond the initial period.
New Jersey Open Textbook Collaborative Project – $1,444,068
The Open Textbook Collaborative project led by Middlesex Community College is composed of 17 New Jersey Community Colleges and one four-year college and will directly involve 1080 full and part-time faculty in designing open textbook courses for 12 high-impact STEM/CTE programs.
A communities of practice model will be employed with training and professional development for effective STEM/OER textbooks creation which meet industry standards of four CTE industry sectors and STEM learning outcomes to increase student success. Supports for expansion of open textbooks at the 17 New Jersey community colleges include creation of the NJ Open repository and the first national Career and Technical Education (CTE) Course OER Collection to share STEM/CTE course OER and training instruction as a reproducible initiative throughout the U.S.
The program anticipates serving 34,000 students at the 18 institutions enrolled in the open textbook courses. Projected textbook savings to students by the end of the three-year project period is $47,600,000. Both Middlesex Community College, the lead institution, and Passaic County Community, a consortium member, are Minority Serving Institutions.
Louisiana Board of Regents’ Interactive OER for Dual Enrollment – $1,985,881
LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network, in consortium with Pressbooks, an Open Education Resources (OER) educational technology is focused on providing high quality post-secondary opportunities to high school students across Louisiana. Secondary and post-secondary instructors of dual enrollment will be engaged in the curation and creation of interactive OER for 25 of the state’s highest enrollment general education courses found to have the largest equity gaps for students.
A team-based cooperative course development model centered around disciplines will be led by an academic librarian providing coordination and technical assistance. Using Pressbooks as the creation platform, and supported through training and local technical experts, instructors will construct comprehensive, interactive courses for use in both secondary dual enrollment and post-secondary academic settings. Adoptions in the state will be supported by the Dual Enrollment Task Force, which was created via Act 128 of the 2019 Regular Legislative Session.
This program will ensure that courses are developed to meet the needs of diverse learners and institutional contexts creating a framework for leveraging existing curated OER content and adding collaboratively developed interactive ancillaries reducing the time to build OER sections. The LOUIS consortium includes several Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) and community colleges members.
The University of Texas at Arlington OER Transport: Enabling Transportation Planning Professional Advancement – $582,322
The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) in consortium with California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) and University of South Florida (USF) are initially targeting students enrolled in the six graduate courses at the consortium universities implementing the six proposed Transportation Planning open textbooks, which include the core curriculum of a postbaccalaureate certificate in Transportation Planning; a national in-demand occupation.
The consortium and project partners will work with their respective metropolitan stakeholders, transportation agencies, and employers, as well as with their open resource libraries and centers for teaching and learning to develop industry-vetted OER materials to be used in a postbaccalaureate certificate enhancing student success and to scale the model across U.S. transportation planning and urban planning programs.
The program anticipates serving 150 students per year at consortia universities within the first 3 years of the grant. Students enrolled in the core courses of the Planning and Policy Certificate using OER textbooks will pay at least 77% less than students in the same certificate program enrolled in non-OER courses using commercial textbooks.