10 KCTCS/Gateway Community and Technical College

Gateway Community and Technical College is a part of the Kentucky Community & Technical College System (KCTCS).

The system as a whole has not yet created a unified effort to create, adapt, or adopt OER, but individual colleges are participating in these endeavors in ways that are meaningful to the local community.

KCTCS dose not have any textbooks in active creation in Pressbooks at this time.

Overview of Gateway’s OER journey

Gateway offers courses in-person, hybrid, and completely online. The eLearning department oversees the course developement of the complete online courses. This is where Gateway has seen the most growth in OER adoption in the college thus far.

Among the complete online courses, 13 use OER textbooks in place of a traditional textbook that students would usually be required to purchase. Calculations were compiled in the 21-22 academic year that determined between the 20-21 and 21-22 academic years, Gateway students enrolled in these courses collectively saved approximately $350,000, with an average savings of $62 a course per student. There is an opportunity to explore the data further to include additional years and obtain more accurate textbook fees that were replaced with OER.

To improve upon student savings, the Library Director and e-Learning Department under the newly formed Teaching and Learning Services, offered faculty workshops on various OER topics throughout the 22-23 school year. The intention was to bring about awareness and foster support among the Gateway community to hopefully adopt or create OER for additional courses, especially those that are hybrid or face-to-face modalities, where OER use is minimal.

This learning opportunity for faculty was developed as a part of Gateway’s Library Director, Elizabeth Goodman’s, OER Librarianship Certificate course work through the Open Education Network. The course work was completed and certificate earned in the Fall of 2022.

The group will also work to identify ways to market the existing online courses that use OER to maximize student savings and create demand for more courses with no textbook costs.

Because of these learning sessions, one in-person English instructor converted their ENG 101 and 102 (English Composition) courses to OER texts and supplemental materials in the Spring of 2023.

To support OER discovery, the Gateway Library created an OER LibGuide for faculty to reference, and has subscribed to EBSCO Faculty Select, an OER discovery tool, since 2021.

Faculty have requested a refresher on how to access and use EBSCO Faculty select. A demonstration will be offered in the Fall 2024 semester.

How to request access to Pressbooks

KCTCS faculty should contact either their local library director, or Elizbeth Goodman directly. Your local library director will get in touch with Elizabeth, who will contact the Pressbooks admin for access.

It would be helpful for faculty to have a course or book in mind to adapt or create in Pressbooks. If no specific project has been identified, a sandbox account can be created for faculty to become familiar with the resource prior to working on a project.

Marketing strategy:

• Advertising during an OER professional development
• Libguide
• Intranet News post on Teaching and Learning Services site
• Faculty Council
• Email to division Deans to share with faculty
• Share Pressbooks information with Library Director Peer Team in the KCTCS network

Graphic Design:

• Not yet applicable

Administrative buy in:

• Supervisor of Library Director, the Associate VP of Academic Services, is aware of the Pressbooks opportunities.

Tutorials:

• No internal tutorials developed at this time

Professional development:

Bluegrass Community & Technical College

One of the sister colleges of Gateway, Bluegrass (BCTC), has been working towards increasing OER usage on campus as well. For example, BCTC has been providing incentive grants for OER adoption in the fall of 2023.  7 faculty applied and are supported so far. 

Bluegrass will also start course marking to indicate which courses are using OER to market to students who may be interesting in saving some money on textbooks.