OpenCSCU was developed to support the adoption and creation of Open Educational Resources (OER) and the implementation of Open Practices throughout the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) system of 17 campuses including 4 state universities, 12 community colleges, and a public online college. This centralized resource provides a clearinghouse where policy, guidelines, and new information can be easily accessed. Most colleges have their own OER libguide but OpenCSCU contains the official system information.
“The OpenCSCU effort is evolving and whereas it once hosted a collaborative with all 17 institutions’ library staff supporting an OER hotline for faculty, it has transitioned to a centralized resource, with a focus on dissemination of best practices, innovations, and opportunities.”
Kevin Corcoran, Executive Director of Digital Learning at CSCU
“The last year has seen some exciting new “open” developments at OpenCSCU and in Connecticut overall,” shared Jillian Maynard, Reference & Instruction Librarian, Central Connecticut State University “including a new OpenCSCU blog and the GoOpenCT statewide K-20 OER repository, in addition, to the ongoing CT OER Grant program and virtual conferences.” Check out the archives from the March 2021 Connecticut OER Summit and the 2020 CSCU OER Summit from last October.
Read the Connecticut OER Council 2021 Legislative Report to better under the the student impact (2.8 million savings last year) and council recommendations for OER definitions, data standards and collection, program awareness, and staffing support.
OpenCSCU Blog
The Connecticut State Colleges & Universities (CSCU) OER Council has launched a new blog, OpenCSCU, focused on our community members’ innovations and successes with open content and practices. Our inaugural post on Open Pedagogy is from Dr. Nicolas Simon from Eastern Connecticut State University.
The council plans to present practical examples that can be replicated by others, including an in-depth look at Open Pedagogy, regaining intellectual property rights, publishing an open text, and so much more. The council’s intent is to provide guidance and support to those interested by demonstrating the value of open content and practices to better serve student success. As we share more content, we hope that our reader base will grow and that our blog posts will encourage conversation and innovation in open education. We specifically hope to generate broader awareness of open practices and build a community of practice that not only validates and normalizes but inspires new efforts.
OpenStax Contribution
Connected to Dr. Nicolas Simon’s open pedagogy efforts, OpenStax’s Introduction to Sociology 3e now includes supplemental works developed by Dr. Simon and his Eastern Connecticut State University students. The latest edition of Introduction to Sociology includes enhanced lecture slides and expanded assessment banks co-developed by students.
OpenStax included the following message in its instructor materials downloads:
Thank you to Dr. Nicolas Simon and the students at Eastern Connecticut State University.
OpenStax instructor materials for Introduction to Sociology 3e
Most of the explanatory and definitional content within these slides was developed through an open pedagogy project by Dr. Nicolas Simon from Eastern Connecticut State University. Dr. Simon led his sociology students in the creation and improvement of the slides as well as additional resources, and then they provided them in useful formats to OpenStax for distribution. (We will be publishing several other materials from this project.). The student perspective is very unique and important to us in this program, and we believe the resulting materials will support all students using the material. We sincerely thank those students, Dr. Simon, Eastern Connecticut State University, and the entire OER community in Connecticut, which has been a leader and strong partner for many years.
CT OER Grant Program
The Connecticut Open Educational Resources Coordinating Council was established by 2019 Connecticut legislation to develop a plan for Open Educational Resources to benefit college students throughout Connecticut. The statewide council has since created the CT OER Grant Program that provides funding opportunities to faculty for the review, adoption, and/or creation of supplemental and stand-alone OER materials along with an annual OER Summit to provide professional development opportunities for faculty and staff.
During the first year of the grant program, the council documented a 4x return on investment from the state’s funding of open education. Serving over 1,100 students, our participating faculty realized a 90% persistence rate average with nearly 80% of their students receiving a C or better… all while transitioning to remote teaching in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The council is currently supporting over 50 grantees from Year 2 for Fall 2021 and will be announcing the Year 3 opportunity for Connecticut faculty in the coming weeks.
GoOpenCT Repository
There is a new OER repository in the works for the state of Connecticut. Led by Doug Casey, the Executive Director of the Connecticut Commission for Educational Technology, a group of educators from K-20 institutions have been testing a site based in the OER Commons platform. The site – GoOpenCT – will be a place for educators to upload and share OER they are using or creating, review content, create and manage groups to create and share collections, and help others make informed decisions about how to best incorporate OER into their own courses. The site is still in beta testing with a goal to launch later this fall. Once launched, the repository will be open to all K-20 educators in the state to upload their OER content, with the hope of not only encouraging others to use OER in the classroom, but also to create collaborative relationships among CT educators around using, adapting, and creating content.
Jillian Maynard is a Reference & Instruction Librarian at Central Connecticut State University, where she is also a part of the newly formed OER Library Team. Prior to Central, Jillian was at the University of Hartford where she led the institution’s participation in the Openstax Institutional Partnership Program in 2017-2018 and completed the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program in 2018-2019 (https://sparcopen.org/people/jillian-maynard/). She has mentored two local SPARC fellows in her time since finishing the program and stays involved in statewide efforts around OER.