23 Lower Columbia College
Andrea Gillaspy Steinhilper
Washington
Type of Institution: Community and technical college
Impetus: Student retention and equity; Washington House Bill 1375
Student Information System: A legacy system, origin unknown
Markings Used: OER and Low Cost Materials
Unique Features: Open and alternative courses are designated in printed class schedule.
Background
Lower Columbia College (LCC) is a small two-year community college in Longview, Washington, with Fall 2018 enrollment of approximately 3,000 full-time equivalent students. Originally, Longview was a logging town, and for the last 30 years our region of southwest Washington State has been economically disadvantaged. The area is fairly rural, located partway between Portland and Seattle, and has no other post-secondary institutions within 45 miles. To assist our community, our strategic plan includes student access, support, and completion. Anecdotally, we have found that the cost of textbooks are a barrier to student access and completion; as a result, the use of open educational resources (OER) and reducing the cost of textbooks has provided important support to the mission of our college.
History of OER at Lower Columbia College
Some LCC faculty began using open educational resources for their own individual courses in the early 2010s. In 2014, LCC participated in the Librarians as Open Educational Leaders initiative from the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) and the Washington State Library (Librarians as Open Education Leaders 2015). Through this program, LCC received a start up grant of $2,500, which funded the development of our OER Action Plan as well as faculty stipends for implementing two OER classes (English 101 and Psychology 101). The Action Plan, a requirement of the initial grant, suggested identifying needs, resources, and partners. We talked with many OER players across campus, including administrators, counseling, student groups, and faculty. Administrators asked us to talk with the bookstore and print shop. Counseling suggested working with the Foundation. All this helped build a core group of supporters of OER. By June 2015, the team evolved into an OER advisory group involving the bookstore, print shop, faculty, and the library. The ongoing advisory group continues to help us communicate OER needs across campus.
Introducing Course Markings
When the LCC Library began working with OER in 2014/15, we did not consider identifying or marking which classes used OER in the course catalog. However, as the movement on our campus grew, with more instructor participation, more classes, and more students interested in inexpensive textbooks, identifying OER classes became increasingly important. The advising and student success offices had been purchasing textbooks because many students could not afford to buy their own. This OER movement would be able to help everyone with the cost of materials and improve student equity on cam