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.
Between 2013 and 2016, the American Institutes for Research led two projects funded by the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) that focused on introducing OER to adult educators of math, science, and ESL. Within each project, teachers received targeted training to learn about OER and how OER can be used, created, evaluated, and shared. Some of these adult educators also engaged in a six month training of trainers. In an attempt to understand what happens after targeted PD ends, we followed-up with participants through an online survey and telephone interviews. This presentation will share the continued practice of adult educators as well as barriers they faced to sustain their use of OER. We will highlight participants' use of OER after the projects ended as well as their successes, the types of supports they need to continue using OER, and what, if any, student impact they have seen. We will also identify and discuss reasons why adult educators stopped using OER after participation in the projects and seek to understand what additional supports can be provided to educators to ensure continued use, development, and sharing of OER. This presentation will also include reference to tools and resources developed by the project for adult educators and OER developed by teachers for their adult learners.
