Focusing on Faculty

 Board of Trustees commitment to reducing student costs  HCC Textbook Committee recommendations  OER as an Instructional Initiative  Faculty-led OER Task Force  Faculty-friendly policy changes  Partnerships with Connexions, COT, CCCOER

2007 HCC Board of Trustees Action ADOPT POLICIES REGARDING CONSTRAINING COSTS OF TEXTBOOKS FOR HCC STUDENTS Recommendation: Adopt the following policies as recommended by State Representative Scott Hochberg and by the HCC Textbook/Bookstore Committee to constrain the rising costs of textbooks: (1) Require books (whenever possible) to be used for at least three years;(2) Require earlier selection dates for textbooks to allow students to shop around for better prices; (3) Implement separate “bundling” of instructional materials so that students don’t have to buy books, CDs, workbooks, etc. that the professor does not expect to use in class; and (4) prohibit gifts or payments from publishers that could influence textbook selections.

2007 HCC Board of Trustees Policy APPROVE POLICY REGARDING THE USE OF PUBLIC DOMAIN LEARNING MATERIALS Recommendation: The Houston Community College System encourages the creation, use, and ongoing maintenance of public domain-based learning materials in accordance with established curriculum standards for educational purposes of the district. The goals of this policy are to provide students with high quality learning materials that reside in the public domain to augment and/or replace costly textbooks, to create sustainable academic resources for students, faculty and staff, and to provide opportunities for professional growth of district employees involved in these activities.

 OER not appropriate for their discipline  Copyright / intellectual property issues  Acknowledgement and reward for work  Perception that free = poor quality  Commercial is easier  Learning curve for discovering, selecting, using, and authoring

 Creating an OER-Friendly Environment  Policy  Culture  Developing Skills and Support  Advocate trainers  Using  Authoring  Focus on Rewards

 Copyright and Intellectual Property  Embed Creative Commons information in the new procedures  Allow employees to maintain ownership of CC- licensed creations  Encourage use of OER as being education-friendly alternatives to expensive licenses

 Textbooks  Draft policy amendment to allow use of unlimited OER in addition to textbooks  Work with bookstore to expand cost-effective options  Board of Trustees initiative to reduce costs of textbooks to students

 Raise awareness  Presentations at HCC faculty conferences  OER website maintained by Ken Busbee  Publicize current faculty activities  Library modules developed with grant funding  Recognize baby steps

 Promote benefits of authoring and using OER  To faculty  To students  To institution  Lorah and I are doing this as a portion of our CIT class

 Presentations at HCC Faculty Development Conferences since 2007  Discipline Day programs, speakers from Connexions, Flat World Knowledge  Jacky came to Houston to train the trainers in February  Presentation to HCC Library Technology Workshop

 CIT courses in place  Connexions authoring  Introduction to OER and Creative Commons  Podcasting, Web 2.0 technologies  Many other courses pertinent to creating OER  staff/instructional-media-center-imc/cit-class- descriptions

 Recognize faculty who are developing free course materials on their own  Consult with individual faculty members who just need time and assistance  Allow more “play” time in the OER CIT courses  Reach more faculty  Institutional inventory of OER development and projects