From a 2014 American Association of Community Colleges presentation with Dr. Jack Lewis, President of New River Community College, Dr. Van Wilson, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Services for the VCCS, and Dr. Dan DeMarte, Vice President of Academic Affairs of Tidewater Community College. Faculty have a wealth of new digital resources available to them that, when integrated effectively,can offer students an enhanced educational experience. Colliding with the promise of these transformative technologies is the decades-old problem of textbook affordability. Four innovative projects highlight Virginia’s community colleges’ efforts to address textbook affordability: a multi-college committee investigating strategies for reducing textbook costs; the first OER degree in the nation; a college-developed site for sharing OER; and an incentive grant to encourage faculty of high enrollment courses to adopt and integrate OER.

1. Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a CC-BY-NC-SA license. Please attribute any
duplicate or derivative works to Richard Sebastian, Virginia Community College System.
The Digital Revolution
Will Be Live-streamed
How Virginia’s Community Colleges Are Using
Digital Technologies to Reduce Textbook Costs
and Increase Student Success

2. Virginia Community College System
Textbook Costs & Digital Learning
Resources Workgroup
Tidewater Community College
Z-Degree Project
New River Community College
Open Text Initiative System
Virginia Community College System
Chancellor’s OER Adoption Fund

3. Reengineering
Textbook Costs & Digital
Learning Resources
Work Group

5. onTASK FORCE
COLLEGE
TEXT
BOOKS
2004

6. TEXTBOOK
COSTS & DIGITAL
LEARNING
RESOURCES
WORKGROUP

7. Explore how networked digital
technology can best be leveraged to
lower the overall cost of textbooks,
including using open educational
resources
Examine VCCS administrative
practices and policies that
unnecessarily add to the cost of
academic textbooks

8. Investigate ways which currently
licensed electronic resources can be
used in electronic "course packs," as a
substitute for text books, or for the
supplementary material often required
for a course of study
Identify opportunities for interested
VCCS faculty to explore using openly
licensed resources in their courses

9. Recommend strategies and
policies for creating an institutional
culture that embraces and practices
openness, transparency, collaboration,
and sharing.
Examine the current relevance of
printed textbooks in an age of
interactive, web-based content, digital
publishing, and collaborative social
networks.

10. SUBCOMMITTEES
FINANCIAL AID
BOOKSTORE CONTRACTS
PUBLISHERS
ACCESSIBILITY
SURVEY
MOOC

11. FINANCIAL
AIDFor VCCS students receiving
financial aid, textbook
purchase options are limited to
the college bookstore

12. CONTRACTS
The terms of a college’s
bookstore contract can have
a long-term impact on future
textbook affordability
efforts

13. TEXTBOOK
PUBLISHERS

14. ACCESSIBILITY

15. TEACHING
& LEARNING

16. LIBRARYS
Libraries and library staff are
essential for any serious
textbook affordability effort to
have long-term sustainability

17. INSTITUTIONAL
“Culture eats strategy
for breakfast”
–Peter Drucker
& FACULTY CULTURE

19. Z
Tidewater Community College
Z-Degree Project
degree°

26. CHANCELLOR’S
OER ADOPTION
GRANT

27. 1. BIO101
2. BIO 102
3. BUS 100
4. CHM 111
5. CST 100
6. ENG 111
1. ENG112
2. HIS 101
3. ITE 115
4. MTH 163
5. PSY 201
6. SDV 100
FALL 2013

28. 520 Students
20 sections
12 colleges
$52,000
FALL 2013

29. http://www.slideshare.net/richardsebasti
an
OpenEd 2014
Nov. 19-21, 2014
Arlington, VA
http://openedconference.org/2014/