Foothill-De Anza Community College District received a statewide technology award for developing a national consortium to make educational resources freely available online.
The district is putting textbooks and other course materials online to lower the cost of higher education.
The California Community College Board of Governors presented the 2008 Technology Focus Award to the district for its work on the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources.
The consortium, established by the district in 2007 and made up of 85 community colleges, promotes the development of online-instructional material for community college faculty and students. In March 2008, the consortium launched the Community College Open Textbook Project with a $527,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
The first free online textbook, "Collaborative Statistics," was released in August 2008. The consortium worked in conjunction with Rice University's Connexions, an open-educational-resources site (cnx.org), to republish the book. ...
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
