Open Education 2015

Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) has built a leading OER program, including one certificate program and two full Associate Degrees available online, with zero textbook costs for students. This comprehensive program was built by pioneering faculty and staff, with resources and support from a vibrant OER community, and supplemented with free digital library collection materials.

In order to establish a culture of openness to support sustainable growth in utilization of OER and in sharing of resources, it was critical that Open Educational Resources be integrated into the online course design and development process at NOVA. This session will provide an overview of online course design and development at NOVA, and how the review and adoption of OER became a natural part of the process. We will discuss the role of Faculty, Instructional Designers and Librarians in integrating OER into a broad college curriculum, and how organizations like Lumen Learning provide key open content, training, and support for success.

We will highlight our future plans for expanding OER at NOVA and how we are contributing to a system-wide initiative to offer associate degree options with zero textbook costs to students at all community colleges in Virginia. We will share lessons learned and offer suggestions for introducing, implementing, or expanding OER initiatives at virtually any institution.