Wednesday, December 1, 2021
CVTC Recognized Globally for Open Education Resources
Chippewa Valley Technical College continues to impress on the global level. In October, the college again was awarded Open Education for Excellence awards in the “Best Open Educational Resources” category.
Many instructors and courses have switched to using free textbooks called open educational resources, or OER, instead of traditional, commercially-published textbooks that are often high cost. Last school year, more than 4,000 CVTC students experienced at least one course with no textbook cost for an average student savings of approximately $246.
“We are honored to receive the Best OER Award for Excellence,” said Kim Ernstmeyer, registered nurse and CVTC’s Open RN project director. “We are thankful for the collaborative efforts from other Wisconsin Technical Colleges and institutions throughout the country to make these resources possible.
“Collaboration is key to this project’s success and was highlighted at the OpenEd 2021 conference during our panel presentation with nationwide OER stakeholders.”
CVTC is in good company with schools being awarded from Mexico, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, New Zealand, South Africa and others. Open Education Global has been recognizing educational institutions in this vein for 10 years. Open education global will have a celebration on YouTube and Facebook Live Tuesday, December 7.
The Open RN textbooks have received international interest, with more than 600,000 users and 1.7 million pageviews from several countries around the world, according to Google Analytics.
CVTC hopes to see trends in cost savings and student success continue. More information about CVTC’s Affordable Learning effort can be found here.
