Winner of the 2021 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, San Antonio College, is one of five distinct colleges in the Alamo College District. It is the oldest two-year public college in Texas with an annual credit enrollment of nearly 20,000 students. In addition to its academic and professional programs, it also offers occupational and technical courses through its county-wide continuing education program. The prestigious Aspen Prize aims to celebrate excellence, advance a focus on equitable student success, and stimulate replication of effective culture and practice. San Antonio College’s support for, and implementation of, open education is one inspiring example of their excellence.
San Antonio has been steadily growing its open education program since 2016, when the Alamo Colleges District was invited to join Achieving the Dream’s OER Degree initiative. The district launched the AlamoOpen website at that time to share information about faculty participants and to measure student savings across all five colleges. We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Sobia Khan, Dean of Academic Success, Professor Laurie Coleman, and Victoria Guerrero under whose leadership the San Antonio College’s OER program has continued to expand and increase equitable access to educational opportunities.
With the guidance of Dr. Khan, the college formed a cross-functional OER committee in 2018 to include Deans, Faculty, the Library Director, an OER Librarian, Institutional Research, and the Academic Chair for Math. This committee, chaired through spring 2020 by English Professor Laurie Coleman, has provided support for the development of both faculty and student resources for open education and has seen a growth of over 300% new OER courses.
Faculty and Student Facing Resources
San Antonio has both faculty and student-facing support for open education. Faculty are invited and encouraged to apply for stipends to learn about open education and develop OER courses. The Teaching and Learning Center provides resources and professional development for these faculty members, who also have access to an OER librarian who can assist them with finding openly licensed and zero-cost materials for developing their courses.
Students are also invited to learn about and find classes that use OER and zero-cost materials while enrolling in their classes. Using the “AlamoOpen no cost Textbook” attribute in the class schedule, students can search for courses that don’t require purchasing a textbook to take the class which potentially can save them hundreds of dollars per semester. The student page includes a form that students can use to send a thank you note to their professors to share how the cost savings has helped them and whether it has an impact on their ability to complete their studies.
Strategic Focus on Equity
San Antonio College released its most recent Strategic Plan in 2020 with a focus on student success and equity, which directly aligns with the goals of the OER committee. As Dr. Sean Duffy, History faculty and OER advocate, takes on the reins of the cross-functional OER committee in the fall of 2021, Dr. Khan shared:
San Antonio’s advancement of OER continues to be an intentional journey in providing equitable opportunities for our students to succeed, and the strategic plan completed in 2020 helps us stay on track as we move towards a full Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) degree pathway.
by Una Daly, CCCOER Director with Judith Sebesta, Executive Director of Digital Higher Education Consortium of Texas