Background | Goals | Documents & Resources | Communication | Team Members

Open Education Resources (OER)

The Lane Community College Open Educational Resources (OER) Team is charged with identifying, promoting use of, and encouraging development of high-quality and viable open, free, or low-cost educational and course materials.

Social networks, the Internet, and other knowledge-sharing technologies have shown great potential in recent years for education and pedagogical methods. The Lane OER Team seeks to transform lives by learning through increasing access to knowledge, improving the quality of course materials, and promoting the professional development of Lane faculty in the development of open educational resources.

The Lane OER Team is comprised of Lane stakeholders, including student, faculty, staff, management, and representatives with knowledge and expertise in open educational resources.

Background:

The impetus for exploring open educational resources at Lane stems from the lack of textbook affordability. Seeking alternatives to expensive course materials, the Associated Students of Lane Community College expressed interest in forming a work group to identify and develop open educational resources for implementation in Lane classrooms.

Open educational resources (OERs) are those which are flexibly managed under an open license by the author(s), allowing anyone to freely move, change, remove, or add content as suits an instructor’s personal method, interests, or course goals. These resources are generally available free of charge and distributed freely over the Internet and a variety of distributors or repositories.

Bringing faculty, students, and staff together, Sonya Christian commissioned the Lane Open Educational Resources Team in spring 2010 as an official project of the Office of Academic and Student Affairs.

Goals:

The goals of the Lane OER Team consist of both short- and long-term goals:

• Identify and collect OERs available to college instructors
• Assess the viability and quality of OERs for college-level education
• Promote the use of OERs among instructors at Lane
• Increase ease of use of OERs among instructors
• To be at the forefront of research and development in the potential improvement to education through technology, fulfilling Lane’s obligation as a member of the League of Innovation
• Develop a pilot OER implementation for actual use in Lane Community College courses beginning fall 2010
• Encourage the development of OERs by Lane faculty and improve professional development opportunities
• Foster a culture of open knowledge, affordable course materials, and sharing at both Lane and in higher education as an industry

Documents and Resources:

The Lane OER Team will post its findings, resources to instructors, and other documents in this section once available.

• Presentation on Open Educational Resources at Lane Community College
• The Promise of Open Education - Lane OER Team Report, Spring 2010

Communication:

• Opening Invitation (*pdf format)

Team Members:

Lane’s OER Team draws from the collective experiences and knowledge of many individuals who are passionate about improving the quality of education at Lane:

• James Manning, Co-Chair
• Jen Steele, Co-Chair
• Velda Arnaud
• Sonya Christian
• Barb Delansky
• Brad Hinson
• Tom Johnson
• Meredith Keene-Wilson
• Vicky Kirkpatrick
• Lynn Lodge
• T.C. Osborn
• Jeremy Riel
• Katie Taylor
• Kienan Wear