1. The Open Course Library: Bridging the
Gap Between LMS and OCW
Open Ed 2011 – Park City, UT
October 25, 2011
Tom Caswell, Open Education Policy Associate
Connie Broughton, Director of eLearnng and Open Education
WA State Board for Community & Technical Colleges

2. Making the Case for “Open”
Why Is “Open” Important in Education?
1. Efficiency: Build on existing investments
2. Affordability: Students can’t afford
textbooks
3. Quality: We tend to do our best work when
we know our peers can see it
4. Self-interest: Increased faculty exposure,
reputation, and opportunities

3. Open Course Library
• Goals
– Design and share 81 high enrollment,
gatekeeper courses
– Improve course completion rates
– Lower textbook costs for students (<$30)
– Provide new resources for faculty to use in their
courses
– Fully engage our colleges in the global open
educational resources discussion.

4. Timeline
• Phase 1: 42 courses
– Available October 31, 2011 at
http://opencourselibrary.org
• Phase 2 : 39 courses
– Available Spring 2013

5. Design Process
81 courses built by our own faculty
1. Define learning objectives
2. Use existing, quality Open Educational
Resources (OER)
3. Fill in gaps with their own content

6. Typical OCW Workflow
Master
Faculty Course
Support Staff Open Course
Problem: Open course updates require ongoing support staff time because the
open course is separate from the faculty’s master course.

7. Open Course Library Workflow
Faculty
Open Master
Course
Course Course
Designer
• Single workflow; more sustainable
• Leverage existing LMS to build open courses
• Many LMS’s now offering “open publishing” feature

8. Future Open Workflow
Faculty Master &
Master
Course Open
Course
Designer Course
• Master & open course materials are linked
• Faculty update both together
• Older versions still available
• Proprietary content is flagged and hidden from
open course

9. More? Better? Faster?
How does OER help teach more students
and teach them better?
1. Non-rivalrous, scalable, searchable
2. Allows students to preview and review
• Paves the way for lifelong learning
3. Can be customized, translated, improved
• Data feedback loops are useless without the
ability to change the content

10. Potential Savings
• 81 courses = 411,133 enrollments / year
• Textbook savings up to $41M+ in / year
• How much could you be saving your students?
• Completion rates may also increase when all
students can afford course materials
(See Student PIRGs 2011 report: “High Prices Prevent
College Students from Buying Assigned Textbooks”)

11. Lessons Learned
Phase 1 Faculty Concerns:
• Many were unfamiliar with ANGEL LMS
• No way to compare work between course teams
• Too many websites to keep track of
Phase 2 Adjustments:
• Using Google Docs to collaborate & share as we go
• All project information in one Google Site

12. Why Google Docs?
Pros:
• Collaborative, consistent, simple tool
– Similar to Microsoft Word
• Broader adoption base – not limited to specific
LMS communities (LMS-neutral)
• Allows for easier viewing, sharing, saving copies
Cons:
• No automated quizzes & assessments
• No formal metadata or content packaging

13. Next Steps
Driving Open Course Library Course Adoptions
• Regional conferences and workshops
• New faculty trainings
Building open sharing into existing teaching
workflows and technologies
• Next LMS will have “open sharing” feature
• Explore open sharing via Tegrity
• Working with system librarians to track and
promote open content

14. Tom Caswell
tcaswell@sbctc.edu
Connie Broughton
cbroughton@sbctc.edu
http://opencourselibrary.org
Slides at: http://slideshare.net/tom4cam