About

The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) is a joint effort by individual community colleges, regional and statewide consortia, the Open Courseware Consortium,  the American Association for Community Colleges, the League for Innovation in the Community Colleges, and many other educational partners to develop and use open educational resources,  open textbooks, and open courseware to expand access to higher education and improve teaching and learning.  Follow us at our Blog and Twitter.

Goal

The primary goal of the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) is to create awareness of OER and help colleges to identify, create and/or repurpose existing OER to improve teaching and learning and make education more accessible for all learners.  We are seeking the support of faculty to identify, review, evaluate, and make available high quality, accessible and culturally open educational resources.

The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement encourages the creation and reuse of free, high-quality content and open source learning systems to replace expensive and proprietary systems. By promoting OER, community colleges can create sustainable academic resources for students and provide collaborative professional development opportunities for faculty.  A wealth of openly licensed and public domain materials are currently available at open repositories on the web that faculty can repurpose in their classes to replace items formerly required for purchase by students.

History

CCCOER was established in July 2007 by the Foothill-De Anza Community College District (FHDA) under the leadership of then Chancellor Martha Kanter. Representatives from over 20 colleges attended the first CCCOER information meeting on July 17, 2007 and participation grew to over 200 community colleges over the next four years.   Dr. Kanter has continued to promote the use of Open Educational Resources as the U.S. Under Secretary of Education since 2009 overseeing policies, programs and activities related to post-secondary education, vocational and adult education, and federal student aid.

In the summer of 2011, CCCOER joined the Open Courseware Consortium (OCW Consortium) as an institutional associate consortium.   Community colleges, districts, and statewide consortia are encouraged to join CCCOER at the OCW Consortium to promote the adoption and creation of open educational resources worldwide and share best practices.

For more details, see the It Takes a Consortium to Support Open Textbooks article in the January/February 2009 issue of Educause Review magazine.