How a TAACCCT Grantee Elevated the Use of Open Educational Resources

College doesn’t come cheap these days. While a year of full-time tuition at a community college currently runs about $3,500, a bargain if compared to most four-year institutions, that’s not anywhere close to the total cost of going to college. For one, students need to acquire all their course materials at the beginning of the semester, and the upfront cost for books and other learning materials can be as steep as replacing a timing belt or buying groceries for the whole semester. These expenses can derail students’ plans to continue their education.

One way to reduce expenses and keep students on track is swapping out traditional course materials for Open Educational Resources (OER). OER are publicly available educational materials, printed or online, that can be freely used, edited, and distributed. They comprise of a diverse range of learning materials, from individual presentations and videos to fully developed textbooks and curricula. Starting in 2011, the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT), a $2 billion federal investment in community colleges, expanded OER use in workforce development by requiring grantee colleges to openly license all curricular materials developed during the grant. That means other institutions or workforce training providers can adapt and use these materials for their own courses.

The Guided Pathways to Success in STEM Occupations (GPSTEM) consortium offers an example of how a TAACCCT grantee used the grant to expand and incorporate OER into teaching. In just over a year, the TAACCCT-supported Go Open Initiative launched by the consortium, created OER materials for a variety of courses and saved students more than $1 million.

Efforts to incorporate OER into teaching had already started at individual community colleges prior to the grants. And these colleges were showing promise that OER was an effective cost-saving alternative to textbooks and that students enjoyed using OER materials more than traditional textbooks. Realizing the potential of developing OER for the entire consortium, Northern Essex Community College submitted a proposal to use part of TAACCCT funding to enhance the adoption and development of OER materials across the consortium. This effort included the creation of a statewide repository of OER materials shared by all community colleges, training and technical assistance for faculty and staff, and providing small grants to support adoption and development of OER materials for courses within GPSTEM programs. The proposal was approved and the Go Open Initiative began in spring 2016.

More than 100 faculty members across the consortium participated in Go Open, working on more than 100 individual or joint OER projects. Most of the projects consisted of adapting or integrating existing OER materials into courses. Some went further to develop an entirely new open textbook or course. Bristol Community College offers one such example. Knowing that their students were dropping out because they couldn’t afford textbooks for the phlebotomy program, faculty at Bristol wanted to use openly-licensed materials. With TAACCCT support, they transitioned to using training videos and other OER for the program, reducing the number of required textbooks to two.

Courses that utilized OER saved students an average of $145 each. For those taking STEM courses, savings were as much as $180. From May 2016 to December 2017, the total amount of student savings from OER reached $1.3 million. Given the initial cost of $115,000 in faculty grants, the resulting savings for students show how far-reaching the impact of OER can be.

While the TAACCCT GPSTEM grant closed in 2017, consortium colleges are carrying the OER mission forward. In addition to the online repository of OER materials developed during the Go Open project, leaders aim to create a full OER degree pathway in the future. They have also sought additional funding to sustain the momentum of OER beyond TAACCCT, with the hope of collaborating with four-year public colleges and universities to enhance the quality and effectiveness of OER for students across Massachusetts.

In addition to supporting worker training and retraining, TAACCCT aimed to create an evidence base for future investments in the American workforce and to create resources usable by any institution willing to take advantage. For GPSTEM, evidence shows that students are saving substantial sums of money on course materials through TAACCCT’s OER strategy. As momentum picks up for broader OER use in higher education, institutions can take note of – and make use of – TAACCCT grant support for open resources.

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