UMUC to make all required course materials freely available to all 64,000 undergraduate students
The 2015 WCET Outstanding Work Awards were announced yesterday, and included an award to this program:
University of Maryland University College: Open Educational Resources Initiative
UMUC has completed the first phase of the largest non-profit initiative in the U.S. to maximize use of Open Education Resources (OER) for all students. UMUC is leading this initiative to respond to the need to lower costs and increase access to course materials for its students. UMUC, given its worldwide population of military and adult students, implemented a plan to ensure that by fall 2015 all undergraduate courses will have adopted eResources at no cost to the student, thus making course materials freely available to all 64,000 undergraduate students and significantly reducing the cost of attendance.This goal has now been met, with more than 700 courses converted to an eResource format. In the next phase of this project, the graduate school will phase in OER resources for its curriculum by fall of 2016. By that date, all of the approximately 82,000 students at UMUC worldwide will have access to all required course materials at no cost.
Kind of amazing really. Well done, UMUC.
Stephen Carson 