Entering the eye of the $2B C3T OER storm: Lessons learned thus far, leveraging the services, planning for future public OER investments
In February 2011 the U.S. Department of Labor announced the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (C3T) grant program, which will make available up to $2 billion over the next four years for community colleges to develop educational and career training programs for displaced workers. An exciting condition of the funding is that all resources must be licensed under CC BY, making C3T the largest federal investment in OER to date in the United States.
Creative Commons worked quickly with its partners the Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative, CAST, and the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges to conceive and develop a set of infrastructure services and support for C3T grantees. Creative Commons has received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to lead this effort. The set of comprehensive services will lend technical support to grantees in meeting the open licensing requirement and ensure the interoperability of education and training materials. In addition, the services will guide grantees to adopt best practices for OER course design and technology, instill institutional knowledge and policies aligned with open licensing, and incorporate a robust evaluation component to track successful progress so that subsequent rounds of C3T funding continue with the important open licensing provision intact.
While the project has been underway for only 6 months (3 year timeline), we'll provide an update on the work of the consortium up to this point, including crucial lessons learned with regard to communications, community outreach, and open course design and creation. We'll preview the services being provided to the first wave of grantees, and discuss the vision and planned activities for future funding rounds, and for scaling open licensing to other federal programs more generally.
