The Michelson 20MM Foundation has awarded a Spark Grant to California State University Channel Islands to advance work that breaks down OER learning silos across the state.
CSU Channel Islands to Create CAopenEd, an Alliance for OER Advocates
The Michelson 20MM Foundation has awarded a Spark Grant to California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) to advance work that breaks down OER learning silos across the state.
In recent years, CSUCI has emerged as a national leader in textbook affordability through its “OpenCI” initiative. Since launching in 2016, OpenCI has benefited more than 44,000 enrollments, saved students over $5 million dollars, and introduced the first three zero-textbook-cost undergraduate majors (aka, “Z-Majors”) in the entire California State University (CSU) system. Our grant will support them in creating the California Alliance for Open Education (CAopenEd).
Jaime Hannans
“We are excited to work closely with the CSU Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) efforts and make important connections with UC and CCC system OER initiatives to collaborate, ideally creating long-term impact for student success and affordability across California”. — Jaime Hannans, Associate Professor of Nursing at CSUCI
A Concerted Effort
CAopenEd will enable OpenCI’s unprecedented success to extend beyond CSUCI’s campus by creating a statewide resource and training center to support OER’s use and the creation of additional Z-Major pathways, as well as collaborative research efforts to explore OER/Z-Majors’ impact on student success.
CAopenEd will be a resource to OER advocates throughout the CSU, University of California, and California Community College systems. Our hope by seeding this project is to continue to see positive OER growth across all three systems of higher education in California. Once established, CAopenEd aims to enhance OER pedagogy, increase its number of Z-Majors in the state, and positively influence the state’s OER policy and practices.
This grant builds on Michelson 20MM’s efforts to ensure OER advocates from across California are working in a cohesive manner. To that end, we played a supporting role in launching the Cal OER Conference, which earlier this month was the first conference focused on OER organized by the three systems of public higher education in California.
Read more about this initiative here.
