Lead by Dr. Diane Ryan, College hopes to reduce the cost of textbooks by $2,000 or more per student by developing and using OER course materials
Dr. Diane Ryan
Dr. Diane Ryan, the Community College’s new Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, announced at the Osher Brown Bag Buzz program held Thursday, November 7 on the Verde Campus that she it heading up a new program that will lead to faculty using open educational resources (OER) course materials. The project will save students thousands of dollars in textbook costs.
The initiative is a part of President Dr. Lisa Rhine’s effort to make post-secondary education available to everyone in the County at the lowest possible cost. It is estimated the OER program will take three or four years to fully implement.
Before coming to Yavapai in September of this year, Dr. Ryan was at Tidewater Community College in Virginia. There, as an academic dean, she advocated for the use of open educational resources. She recruited 38 faculty members at Tidewater to teach with OER course materials. As a consequence, students at Tidewater have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in book purchases since 2014 when the program was begun.
Dr. Ryan is now turning her experience with OER at Tidewater to developing a similar program at Yavapai.