Item Detail
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Leeward Community College
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Located in Honolulu, HI
Urban
Public community college in the University of Hawaii system -
3235
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0
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In Hawaii there are two groups to which the community colleges belong: University of Hawaii system and UH Community College system.
Governing/managing body: Library
Program partners:
• Educational Media Center (EMC)
Funding
• Office of the Vice President for Community Colleges -
Workshops
• Pacific Region Learning Summit
• OER 101
Incentives and awards program
UH OER committees
OER Campus Committee
• Faculty
• Librarians
• Educational Media Center
Course marking designation (TXT0) -
OER funding for the University of Hawaii Community College (UHCC) system comes from the Office of the Vice President for Community Colleges (our system office). The “innovation funding” for this year “was contingent on coordinating systemwide activities including training, textbook review incentives, and creation and modification project awards.” In previous years Leeward used funding for a “renewable assignment award. That award was designed to partner a faculty member with an instructional designer to develop a renewable assignment.” This and other funding has been key to the success of the program, “We've had money to support training, we've had money to pay overloads for faculty to attend training as well as to do modification and creation projects.” Funding is requested annually.
The training program for the UH system was started first here and then expanded to include participants from the entire system. In addition, the training is mostly managed by Leeward employees. For years the system-wide Pacific Region Learning Summit has been held in the summer. This was a five-day OER track that participants could attend. Presently, all training occurs online in synchronous and asynchronous formats.The training comes in two versions: Synchronous online workshops and LMS-hosted self-directed online modules. This potentially touches all institutions and all types of employees, especially faculty who may be interested in using OER to improve their teaching. Campus training was initially conducted by the library through the Educational Media Center (EMC), which provided crucial support, but eventually the library took over training entirely.
The campus OER committee has been around since beginning to discuss OER on campus. This has benefitted the whole campus by providing guidance and direction to the program as a whole. It also works closely with the system groups to ensure consistency. The committee includes faculty, librarians, and representatives from the EMC. Instructional designers from the EMC have “been really crucial for our campus from the beginning.”
Assessment of the program is done by measuring student cost savings, the number of courses with a TXT0 designation (50%) content, and the number of faculty trained (over 200 throughout UH-CC the system). Another way to see success is to see how informed faculty are and their willingness to consider OER for their courses, and more recently to adapt or create. Despite the many training and workshop sessions “we still have people who are interested in getting trained, who are interested in learning more about OER.” It seems this will always be the case, since new faculty constantly enter the system.