Open Course Library

Open Course Library (OCL) is an effort by the State of Washington to identify and make available digitally, to community and technical college instructors and students across that state, free textbooks, interactive assignments, and videos. Instructional materials can be "a smorgasbord of teaching modules and exercises developed by other open-learning projects. . . Interactive-learning Web sites and even instructional videos on YouTube . . ." However, OCL is not an OER publishing project, although it did contribute to the development of some widely used resources. Goals include: lowering textbook costs for students, providing new resources for faculty to use in their courses; and fully engaging in the global OER or open educational resources discussion.

The project was funded by matching grants of $750,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Washington State legislature. In 2009-2010 the affected Washington State student body totaled 470,000 and was increasing. Many of the materials made available are open educational resources or OERs. Specifically, they include syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments and some are paired with low cost textbooks, costing $30 or less. In subjects across the sciences and humanities, the OCL team created curriculum support for Washington State's most popular 81 courses in the state's 34 community and technical colleges. Instructors were free to use the materials as they wish, in part or an entire course. The project was headed by Cable Green, then eLearning Director for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.

It emerged from a two-year discussion that ultimately produced a Strategic Technology Plan. The plan outlines a unified vision known as Washington Student Completion Initiative.

OCL participants were selected from a grant proposal competition. The process, which led to production of the materials, was open and several preliminary Town Meetings were used employing Eluminate Live. All participants were welcome. The meetings are archived. Topics for discussion included interactions with publishers, content presentation, copyright policies, and various Creative Commons licenses.

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