This post was contributed by Jen Klaudinyi, Faculty Librarian, Portland Community College, Sylvania Campus.
This has been a year of OER planning and advocacy at PCC. In the fall, we formed an OER Steering Committee led by the library and made up of stakeholders from across the district including representatives from the faculty, distance learning, disability services, student government and the bookstore, as well as cabinet sponsors. As a large institution, we spent this year organizing, advocating, teaching and laying the groundwork for change.
In addition to forming our steering committee, highlights from the year include:
- Tracking OER-related student savings (more info below)
- Surveying Faculty about OER interest and barriers to adoption (more info below)
- Finalizing our Steering Committee charge (more info below)
- Establishing a web-presence for our OER initiative, including our OER guide
- Adopting an OER initiative logo (many thanks to student-creator Annie Payne)
- Hosting 2 well-attended regional OER workshops in February 2015
- Identifying and organizing OER support across the district
- Providing OER training for librarians and coordinating OER support for instructors through our liaison structure
- Developing a Creative Commons license request form so that faculty and staff can openly license work they create that is copyrighted by the college
- Presenting to PCC’s board, the Educational Advisory Committee, the Deans of Instruction, as well as several academic departments and groups
- Applying for OER “Special Projects” funding from openoregon.org
Student Savings from OER Adoption
PCC’s OER Steering Committee just voted to adopt a goal: OER at PCC will save students 1 million dollars by Fall 2017. Before adopting this goal, we began tracking OER-related savings using a form that faculty can fill out in order to generate a savings spreadsheet. We currently estimate student savings of $43,626 per term and counting. Many instructors have indicated that they are planning OER courses, so we expect this number to increase over the summer and on into next year.
Faculty Interest Survey
In April, we surveyed faculty about their interest in using OER, SAC (Subject Area Committee/discipline) support, as well as barriers and needs. 97 instructors responded, and we found that OER interest is high. Respondents indicated that 9 of our SACs/discipline groups are discussing the adoption of OER. Instructors indicated that help finding OER, time and compensation would help them to adopt open resources.
Plans for the future
The Steering Committee is working on a formal proposal to make “OER at PCC” one of the college’s strategic initiatives. Librarian Jen Klaudinyi has been granted partial release time in the next academic year to coordinate and provide OER support. The Committee’s focus will be to find funding and create structures to support interested faculty and SACs adopt OER.
