Our Foundation.
With the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement taking a huge uptick across educational institutions, Yavapai College (YC) recognized the importance of OER for its students and officially launched its internal program in fall of 2019. With YC’s success in its first year, they connected with Arizona’s other rural community colleges and applied for the Open Textbook Pilot program funded by the improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) through the U.S. Department of Education in 2020.
Led by Yavapai College, the Open Textbooks for Rural Arizona consortium was formed receiving just over $800K from the U.S. Department of Education in 2021.
Our Objectives.
Bringing Open Educational Resources (OER) to rural Arizona students and community members.
Increase Student Cost Savings.
The consortium is collectively developing more OER courses, textbooks, lab books, and other Open materials. More courses will be offered as OER which will increase student cost savings since students will not have to purchase as many textbooks or course materials.
Increase Collaboration.
Through synergistic efforts and strategically targeting specific courses at each partner college, consortium members can develop more OER material. Cross institutional collaboration takes place through instructional designer, librarian, and faculty workgroups.
Increase Access to OER.
Through our OER Commons Hub, developed materials are made available for use by faculty from other colleges. Faculty are able to adopt and adapt existing courses for their own class without starting from scratch.
Increase Knowledge of OER and Open Pedagogy.
The consortium offers ongoing professional development through an OER training course and an annual professional development day. Both offer faculty, staff and administrators the opportunity to learn more about OER, Creative Commons, copy right, open pedagogy, and more.