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Open Education Consortium Welcomes New Members (April 2014)

Posted by Igor Lesko on Thursday, April 17th, 2014

The Consortium is pleased to announce addition of eight new members.

New Institutional Members

New Organizational Members

More information about these members is below:

Founded in the XVth century, then closed for nearly 200 years, Université de Nantes reopened in 1962 and went on to become one of the top French universities. With its history and its dynamism, the University is ready to face the challenge of international competition. Today, Université de Nantes is one of France’s top multidisciplinary universities. It is located in an attractive area boasting strong economic and demographic growth over the past two decades. The University has campuses in Nantes, Saint-Nazaire and La Roche-sur-Yon. Nearly 90% of the students study at the campus in Nantes, the 6th largest city in France, located on the Loire estuary some thirty miles from the Atlantic coast and two hours from Paris

Université de Nantes OCW website: http://www.univ-nantes.fr/ocw

Virginia’s community colleges have a 40-year track record of educational excellence and innovation to serve the needs of their citizens and strengthen the Commonwealth’s economy. The Virginia General Assembly established the Virginia Community College System in 1966 to address the need for a comprehensive system of affordable education for citizens of the Commonwealth. A key concern was Virginia’s ability to develop a skilled and knowledgeable workforce to expand the state’s economy. Today the 23 colleges of the VCCS provide thousands of Virginians the opportunity to gain a quality education through degrees, workforce credentials, and transfer agreements with our 4-year institutions.

Over the past two years, the colleges of the VCCS, along with the System Office, have demonstrated a commitment to textbook affordability through a number of innovative initiatives. In 2013, the System Office offered the Chancellor’s OER Adoption Grant to encourage faculty to adopt OER for 12 of the VCCS’s high enrollment courses. Even with this small-scale pilot, VCCS students have saved, at a minimum, over $100,000 on textbook costs. These courses are currently being piloted for a second semester, and have begun to be shared among faculty and colleges. A second round of grants is due to be offered this spring. Last year, Tidewater Community College developed the first “textbook zero” degree in the nation, an Associates in Business Administration that they are calling a Z Degree. The project was nominated for a 2014 Bellwether Award. Northern Virginia Community College isn’t far behind TCC, with a no-textbook-costs General Education Degree scheduled to be ready to pilot for Fall 2014. Other VCCS institutions have their own OER projects–New River Community College’s Open Text Initiative System (OTIS), Virginia Highland’s OER STEM program, and a number more. In addition, over the past two-years a multi-college project called the Textbook Costs and Digital Learning Resources Work Group has been developing broad, system wide recommendations for reducing textbook costs for VCCS students. While the adoption of these materials is still minimal, the development and adoption of OER is slowly becoming part of the institutional culture, and the VCCS is working on ways to establish an effective infrastructure to support and sustain OER for the long term.

From our modest beginnings in 1968, TCC has blossomed into Hampton Roads’ largest provider of higher education and workforce development services. We have campuses in Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach, a regional Visual Arts Center in Olde Towne Portsmouth, the TCC Jeanne and George Roper Performing Arts Center in downtown Norfolk, a regional Advanced Technology Center on the Virginia Beach Campus and the Regional Automotive Center in Chesapeake. We have an annual enrollment of nearly 46,000 students, being the second largest undergraduate student body in the Commonwealth. The college offers more than 150 programs, including business administration, culinary arts, fine arts, general studies, health professions, modeling and simulation, network security, multimedia design and automotive technology. The college’s motto is simple and direct: “From here, go anywhere.” TCC provides open-access higher education and training to people of all ages and backgrounds, helping them to achieve both their individual goals and contribute as citizens and workers to the vitality of our region and an increasingly global community.

TCC understands there are a number of key things that are necessary to make an open OER degree program work:

– Commitment from the organization to provide the necessary resources to build the curriculum.

– Engagement from the faculty, who must be willing to venture into unfamiliar territory.

– Engagement with the larger OER community.

– A key role for librarians to work with the staff and faculty

– Continuous effort to fine tune and improve the program

DCCC is currently the 6th largest higher education institution in the Philadelphia, PA (U.S.) region serving approximately 28,000 students annually. WE are a 2-year community college offering over 50 different associates’ degrees and certificates programs at 8 major campuses in two counties (Delaware and Chester). We employ approximately 150 full-time faculty and over 600 adjunct faculty.

Currently we are in the process of creating a full-blown OER program as charged by the Provost. We have a committee of approximately 50 faculty and administrators working to craft a strategic plan, educate faculty, support faculty through adoption and creation of OERs, and to educate students. We have at least 10 projects in progress or development using OERs. These include a wide range from OAT adoption to OER and courseware creation.

DCCC OER website: http://libguides.dccc.edu/oer

USM is a Research Intensive University recognised by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia (MOHE) in 2007. USM offers educational and research opportunities to students and staff. In 2008, USM became the first university in the country to be selected by the Malaysian government to participate in the Accelerated Programme for Excellence (APEX), a fast-track programme that helps tertiary institutions achieve world-class status.

USM is planning to start sharing content openly by September 2014.

Although UTeM is the fourteenth public university in Malaysia, nevertheless it prides itself by being the first technical public university and the first to offer higher technical education using the application oriented approach with relatively strong emphasis on practical work and application. UTeM offers Engineering and Information & Communications Technology programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, with dedicated and committed academicians in delivering their wisdom. The academic programmes of UTeM are designed to provide students with good academic foundation and high technical skills to enable them to develop as competent technical professionals.

With various research projects undertaken by our research experts in an extensive range of subjects, UTeM pledges to strive for continuous innovation in ensuring that everyone will benefit from our research projects and innovations. UTeM is planning to start sharing content openly by September 2014.

The Network is a joint initiative by the UNESCO Chair in Open Educational Resources at Open Universiteit in the Netherlands (coordinator) and the UNESCO/COL Chair in Open Educational Resources at Athabasca University, Canada. It is a global network of PhD researchers and experts in open education.

Lektorium LLC; is one of the largest Russian open educational resources providers. To date, it has made available more than 2000 college level video-lectures. The portal has more that 150 000 visitors per month. At the end of 2013 Lektorium LLC started developing a Russian MOOC (massive open online courses) platform. The MOOC platform will be launched in 2014. The team at Lektorium is planning to further support the OCW movement by producing more free video lectures and courses in MOOC format.