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The average college student spends over eleven hundred dollars a year in college textbooks
and that the end of their college careers they'll be looking
at a pile of debt. My textbooks cost more than my car.
I teach mathematics for us, so we went from 120 dollar textbook
to zero dollars. Since I've been using Open Educational Resources, I've seen
a gradual improvement in my students passing with a C or better in addition to
having access to materials as soon as the class started,
the accessibility, there was a lot more
active learning and engagement required on the part of my students.
I saw seventy-five percent of my students pass with a C or better and
that is statistically significant.
We were invited to be part of a consortium called Kaleidoscope
and Kaleidoscope was funded through a grant from Next Generation's Learning Challenges.
Through that we were given the support so that we could develop
our own courses in collaboration with partner institutions around the country.
Our faculty could collaborate with their colleagues as well
in developing those supporting materials using the OER materials.
We are much more easily seen what we've started replicated
across other sections in other parts of the curriculum. Because these digital
resources are web-based
they're portable and they can be used on different devices. Success in this
project has resulted in
free or reduce costs of academic materials,
improved grades, increased student retention
and materials that are now more sustainable across institutions.
At the time of increasing student debt, decreasing student completion rates,
and limited budgets in higher education,
OER targets vulnerable student populations with approaches that are
known to lower costs
and increase student success. Public funds have been committed to sustaining it
and libraries are now building digital OER repositories.
TC3 is committed to continuing in ongoing development
and sharing of open courses in order to make a SUNY education more effective
and affordable.