Our goal at Central Virginia Community College (CVCC) is to help our current and future students earn their degrees with efficiency and affordability. We will describe the challenges and rewards of developing OER courses that support the Associate in Arts and Sciences transfer degree programs. CVCC has embraced the Guided Pathways Initiative in order to streamline the curricula and enable students to complete their degree programs within a reasonable length of time. To make this goal attainable, we are focusing on cost-cutting strategies while maintaining quality standards and rigors of the educational environment. We are meeting the challenges of providing a well-rounded general educational experience during the first two years of the student's academic journey, by re-designing the existing required and elective curricular offerings as OER or low-cost courses. We are focusing on re-designing or developing several elective courses in the Natural Sciences, Humanities, and Social Sciences to provide students with a variety of choices as they explore their individual interests, while still within the bounds of the Guided Pathways model. We will describe some of the strategies we have implemented as we move forward towards our goal of having OER or low-cost degree programs at our college that serve the needs of our students and meet the requirements of the four-year institutions where most of these students will eventually transfer to complete their baccalaureate degrees.
