UC Irvine Libraries

INTRODUCTION

SB 1052 (Steinberg, 2012) specified that the California Open Education Resources Council (“CA-OERC”) be established under the administration of the Intersegmental Committee of Academic Senates (“ICAS”) of the University of California, the California State University, and the California Community Colleges. The bill called for the addition of §66409 to the California  Education Code to define the makeup of the CA-OERC and its responsibilities.

To establish the CA-OERC and the accompanying California Digital Open Source Library (COOL4Ed), the Senate Bills apportioned $5,000,000 and directed the California State University, Office of the Chancellor to seek private funds to match the State budget. The CSU, directed to administer the funds, was awarded grants in Fall 2013 by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Gates Foundation to match the State’s funding, as mandated by SB 1052 (Steinberg, 2012) and SB 1053 (Steinberg, 2012). Per state legislation, the California State University (CSU) facilitated collaboration among the three segments of California public higher education to design and deliver intersegmental services for the faculty and students of California’s public colleges and universities. The CSU’s leadership and support enabled the

CA-OERC to operate effectively and allowed for the necessary flexibility among the three segments.

The CA-OERC first met in January 2014 with meetings scheduled every two weeks. Through both valuable in-person meetings and conference calls, the CA-OERC has made significant progress on the issues surrounding adoption, implementation, and use of open educational resource (“OER”) textbooks by faculty and students.

Achievements January 2014-December 2015

Developed criteria for selecting 50 highly-enrolled courses common across the three segments (Winter 2014) Canvassed the publicly available Course Identification Number System (C-ID.net), statewide campus bookstores, and segmental website information (CCC, CSU, UC) about high-enrollment courses likely to involve standard textbooks (Winter 2014) Canvassed the anglophone landscape of extant open educational resources (“OER”) repositories and their policies (Winter 2014) Compiled a list of 50 courses for which to identify OER (Spring 2014) Developed rigorous rubrics and training material for OER textbook reviewers (Spring 2014) Identified and contacted administrative leadership (CCC, CSU, UC) who may help with awareness of OER (Fall 2014) Identified more than 160 appropriate OER textbooks for the 50 courses that will result in approximately 450 textbook reviews to be displayed on COOL4Ed (Spring 2014~Fall 2015) Surveyed CCC, CSU, & UC faculty for feedback on adopting OER textbooks Performed extensive research on the adoption, implementation, and use of OER textbooks with findings specific to CCC, CSU & UC (Spring 2015-Fall 2015) Continued outreach and education by presenting at conferences and regional governance meetings (Spring 2014-Fall 2015) Established an online presence via CA-OERC website and a social media presence with Facebook and Twitter (Spring 2014-Fall 2015)

The CA-OERC represents an unprecedented collaboration among three disparate segments of California public higher education, a collaboration unparalleled by any other large state-funded system of universities and colleges. With 113 CCC campuses, 23 CSU campuses, and 10 UC campuses, the scale of CA-OERC’s work cannot be underestimated. The Council’s success has been contingent upon representing the diversity of each segment as well as discovering where the segments’ missions coalesce.