About
Goal
The primary goal of the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) is to create awareness of OER and help colleges to identify, create and/or repurpose existing OER to improve teaching and learning and make education more accessible for all learners. We are seeking the support of faculty to identify, review, evaluate, and make available high quality, accessible and culturally open educational resources.
The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement encourages the creation and reuse of free, high-quality content and open source learning systems to replace expensive and proprietary systems. By promoting OER, community colleges can create sustainable academic resources for students and provide collaborative professional development opportunities for faculty. A wealth of openly licensed and public domain materials are currently available at open repositories on the web that faculty can repurpose in their classes to replace items formerly required for purchase by students.
History
CCCOER was established in July 2007 by the Foothill-De Anza Community College District (FHDA) under the leadership of then Chancellor Martha Kanter. Representatives from over 20 colleges attended the first CCCOER information meeting on July 17, 2007 and participation grew to over 200 community colleges over the next four years. Dr. Kanter has continued to promote the use of Open Educational Resources as the U.S. Under Secretary of Education since 2009 overseeing policies, programs and activities related to post-secondary education, vocational and adult education, and federal student aid.
In the summer of 2011, CCCOER joined the Open Courseware Consortium (OCW Consortium) as an institutional associate consortium. Community colleges, districts, and statewide consortia are encouraged to join CCCOER at the OCW Consortium to promote the adoption and creation of open educational resources worldwide and share best practices.
For more details, see the It Takes a Consortium to Support Open Textbooks article in the January/February 2009 issue of Educause Review magazine.
Join Us
Community colleges can get involved by:
- Becoming institutional members of the Community College Consortium at the OCW Consortium.
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Participating in the next OER survey;
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Sharing what they are already doing in terms of promoting open textbooks, open courseware, and OER on their campuses;
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Providing the College Open Textbook Collaborative with faculty volunteers to review open textbooks;
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Identifying OER advocates on their own campuses to serve as the faculty liaison between the CCCOER and faculty on their own campuses; and
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Encouraging their faculty to visit the CCCOER website to review materials and the catalogue of open textbooks (750+) at no cost.
Questions?
Send your questions and comments to Una Daly, Outreach Manager at unatdaly at ocwconsortium dot org
