Dive Brief:
- Northern Virginia Community College’s Extended Learning Institute and its partner, Lumen Learning, plan to publish 24 courses with no textbook costs for students because of open educational resources.
- The college believes it is the first to fully share OER degree pathways in this way, offering schools the framework for two complete degree programs and allowing customization based on the needs of their own institutions.
- The zELI courses, as they’re called, will be accessible through the Lumen Learning platform, and the company is planning to offer support for schools using the courses, including faculty training, technical support, customization abilities, LMS integration options, and guidance around OER program design.
Dive Insight:
Tidewater Community College's Z-Degree program in business administration was billed as the nation's first textbook-free degree program. Northern Virginia Community College’s Extended Learning Institute has moved forward to make the courses more easily accessible to other schools. They were already available by request, but the joint announcement with Lumen Learning could speed adoption of OER courses more generally.
According to the Virginia Community College System, which encompases both Tidewater and Northern Virginia, Tidewater’s Z-Degree courses will also be released, along with more than 100 courses in the Zx23 Project. The system’s ed tech team expects 2016 to bring a “dramatic increase in publicly available, high-quality OER courses.”