Library And Learning Resources Programs Advisory Committee – Dan Crump

ANNUAL DATA SURVEY

The Survey is out!

Kirsten Corbin, Dean of Basic Skills and Special Programs at the Chancellor’s Office, reported to me that she sent out the Survey for 2014-15 (in an email) on March 15, with a due date of May 16.  The email message had a link to the actual survey for your college.  The email was sent to the contact designated for your college.  Kirsten and I used the list from last year and tried to verify that the contact names were still current.  I have heard back from most everyone---still waiting to hear from 13 colleges.  I have already sent several emails and will now start phoning.

If you have any questions, please contact me at crumpd@arc.losrios.edu

COLLEGE TEXTBOOK AFFORDABILTY ACT OF 2015 (AB 798)

Open Educational Resources (OER) are a frequent topic of discussion in community colleges these days, in part because of the work of the California Open Educational Resources Council (COERC), an intersegmental group of faculty created in response to SB 1052 (Steinberg, 2012). COERC is working to promote the use of OER by identifying resources for faculty who wish to adopt these materials in their classes and providing incentives to faculty to lower textbook costs.

AB 798 (Bonilla, 2015) created the OER Adoption Incentive Program to provide incentives and reward campus, staff, and faculty efforts to accelerate the adoption of open educational resources. The bill requires “ that specified moneys for the program be used by campuses to create and support faculty and staff professional development, open educational resource curation activities, curriculum modification, or technology support for faculty, staff, and students, as specified.”

The goal of the College Textbook Affordability Act of 2015 is to reduce the costs of course materials for California college students by encouraging faculty to accelerate the adoption of high-quality no-cost and low-cost course materials, especially Open Educational Resources. The legislative strategy will be implemented through the OER Adoption Incentive Program, which provides funding for faculty professional development focused on significantly lowering the cost of course materials for students while maintaining the quality of materials. As part of the legislation, the State of California has allocated $3 million for the program, and each California State University and California community college can request up to $50,000 for its campus OER program.  The amount is based on the number of class sections ---minimum of 10 and maximum of 50---that use OER materials.  Note: these have to be sections that are not currently using OER---each section must show a savings of at least 30% from the textbooks (based on college bookstore prices) used in the previous term.

For full details, colleges should review the legislation---www.leginfo.ca.gov  and search for Assembly Bill 798 in the current session.  The resources and support services on the California Open Online Library for Education website---www.COOL4Ed.org---include sample academic senate resolutions, sample templates for grant proposals, easy access and discovery of OER, and more.