Since
the spring of 2011, Chadron State College has been involved in the Kaleidoscope
Open Course Initiative which focuses on using open
educational resources (OER) to enhance student success. Some benefits resulting
from participation in this project include:
Improved student success
Often, students waiting on financial aid
and/or loans are not able to purchase required course textbooks until the
second or third week after the course start date. Delayed textbook access places students at
a disadvantage. These students are behind from the very beginning of the
course. Use of open educational resources in Kaleidoscope courses provides
students with access to materials on the first day of class. Access to course
materials on the first day of class enhances student performance and learning.
This, in turn, leads to greater student retention.
Reduced
cost for a college education
From
fall 2011 through fall 2012, 655 CSC students enrolled in Kaleidoscope courses taught by 11 different instructors saved over $58,000 in
textbook expenses. Students who leave college without a degree are often from
less privileged backgrounds. For these students, the deciding factor for
leaving is often college affordability.
Improved
course quality
The Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative provides
faculty members the opportunity to collaborate across institutions to develop,
implement, reuse, and redesign content using OER and open course frameworks.
The long-term value of such an effort is immense. Within higher
education the current approach to course development can be described as
"reinventing the wheel". When a professor retires, the expertise
and experience obtained from many years of teaching a course is lost. Kaleidoscope is an
endeavor to design, reuse, and redesign courses through a community of
professors with a range of expertise.
This allows the opportunity to "build on the shoulders" of
others by doing significant intellectual work on teaching and learning, much
like what is done in research. This process increases the likelihood of
real breakthroughs in teaching and learning employing a continuous improvement
approach via a faculty community.
Sustained
local faculty control within a teaching commons
While fully developed courses are available, and
may be especially helpful for new faculty, faculty members are encouraged to
contribute by tailoring courses to fit their students. Such a blended course
capitalizes on
1) the
expertise of the community of faculty within the teaching commons by
delineating the common ways all students learn and
2) the faculty member’s experiences and expertise
in identifying the ways student learning is idiosyncratic.
As Derek Bok challenges higher education in Our Underachieving
Colleges, we can do better. The Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative is one effort,
among many, in which Chadron State College is embracing the challenge to do
better.
