In today's world of higher education, everyone is being asked to do much more with much less. So when members of Northern Essex Community College's Textbook Task Force decided to launch a pilot Open Educational Resources initiative, we knew having faculty support was critical to its success. In this presentation, we will share with you our process for motivating faculty to get started with OER and the important role our early adopters played in the fast growth of the OER movement at NECC.
A brief overview of NECC's OER project will be shared, which outlines an initial investment of $5,000 and a projected first semester student savings of $52,000. In just 18 months, the project has grown into an $18,000 investment with a projected student savings of over $300,000 in four academic terms. The focus of the presentation will be on the faculty role in securing funding, motivating other faculty to get involved, creating partnerships and sharing resources. The mindset change that occurred in most cases will also be discussed because what started as a way to save students money has truly changed the way many of our faculty are teaching and more importantly, how are students our learning.
