The Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD), one of the largest community college systems in the United States, is comprised of ten individually accredited community colleges and serves over 260,000 students. The MCCCD has developed a project called the Maricopa Millions Open Educational Resources (OER) Project , which is saving students money and creating greater access to learning materials using OER. This presentation will provide details on how a very large community college district is developing awareness of OER to faculty and students, increasing use of OER and documenting critical measures. The presenters will provide details on how they are scaling OER from pockets of innovation to a strategic implementation to target developmental education courses and high enrollment classes. Data on faculty awareness and use as well as student awareness, use and satisfaction, student performance, evidence of access to learning materials, and cost savings will be shared.
The Maricopa Millions OER Project was created to foster a District-wide culture that actively encourages, supports, and sustains the use of Open Educational Resources for courses at all levels. The project has invited students, faculty members and administrators to work together to increase student-learning opportunities through the use of open materials and to work together to address the challenges of long-term OER sustainability and implementation.
The Maricopa Millions OER Project includes development of a strategic, sustainable OER infrastructure that includes: awareness, professional development, OER development and technical support, marketing and technical infrastructure.
The driving objective for the project is to save MCCCD students $5 Million Dollars over the five years through the use of OER materials.
In an effort to increase adoption of and use of OER, the Maricopa Millions OER Project is working to recruit faculty teams to adopt and create OER learning materials. A call for proposals has been conducted during the Fall and Spring semesters since the Fall 2013 semester. Team submissions by faculty from multiple colleges were encouraged. This strategy was intended to increase adoption of the materials at multiple colleges. Faculty teams selected are provided with training and support to develop learning materials including course content/textbook, assessment, and other learning aids. Research, adoption and development of these materials is conducted and the courses are then piloted using these OER materials.
Throughout the Maricopa Millions OER Project, data is being collected to form a longitudinal study over the five-year period which includes faculty data, student data, information on student access to materials and cost savings. Data is being conducted each semester of the academic year.
