Bringing OER to Scale: The Academic & Economic Outcomes of ATD's OER Degree Initiative

In 2016, Achieving the Dream launched the Open Educational Resource (OER) Degree Initiative, a three-year project that enabled 38 community colleges across the U.S. to lower costs and improve educational experiences for students by creating OER degree pathways using freely available and openly licensed instructional materials. SRI, a non-profit research institute, and rpk GROUP, served as research and evaluation partners, examining the academic and economic impacts of OER degrees, and investigating how to scale and sustain OER programs. During this webinar ATD and its partners will share the findings from the third and final research and evaluation report of the OER Degree Initiative, which was released on Feb. 20th at ATD's DREAM conference. The report sheds light on how OER courses impacted students’ progress to degree, what the costs, benefits, and return on investment of OER degrees were for students and institutions, and how faculty experienced OER adoption and use. During this session we will also reflect on how OER degrees can advance institutional strategies related to access, equity, and quality, and discuss next steps in the evaluation of OER adoption and use.