Jorgo Gushi
Chair of the Massachusetts Student Advisory Council (SAC) to the Board of Higher Education, Member of MA OER Advisory Council
Quinsigamond Community College
The following is an excerpt from a panel with students from the Massachusetts Student Advisory Council (SAC) to the Board of Higher Education from Open Education week 2021. The entire panel is available – Unleashing the Power of Massachusetts Students to Increase OER Awareness.
How has COVID-19 impacted student learning in terms of Open Education Resources?
So, especially community colleges around the nation have invested in the development and implementation of free open educational resources as a means of relieving inequitable student financial burdens and also removing barriers to competition and access that surfaced primarily due to COVID. Of course, these issues existed way before COVID surfaced, but with COVID everything got worse. We see students struggling to pay their tuition, pay their housing, pay for their food– so that’s where OER comes as a shining sun to help on this dark situation we’re living in. And with the start of the pandemic, the whole U.S. education system shifted its modality from in-person to remote and finding OER to be extremely useful given its digital format. So, previously we looked and researched how good the digital format is versus the physical format, but now, given COVID and the situation we’re living in, I think that its digital modality, OER was really successful. And I think it’s the most equitable choice we can have right now and the most affordable, of course.