West Hills College Lemoore (CA) P116T200017, $1,999,924.00 (multi-year request), in consortium with

Lead Education Agency West Hills Community College District, Fiscal Agent College of Marin, Allan 

Hancock College, and College of the Canyons, proposes to establish the California Consortium for 

Equitable Change in Hispanic Serving Institutions Open Educational Resources (CC ECHO) program. The 

applicant has identified the target population as faculty and students at California Community Colleges, 

federally recognized Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI), emerging HSIs, national colleges and universities. 

CC ECHO proposes to implement an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) framework into Open 

Educational Resources (OER) to meet several state and national needs. Guided by leading practitioners 

in the field, CC ECHO will develop culturally relevant OER and training materials for faculty on delivering 

that OER, host curated and created material on multiple open-license platforms, deploy mini-grants for 

subject matter experts and students to provide a wide view in OER materials, and engage HSIs, a 

collective of colleges in critical need of support, in a robust dissemination plan. The program anticipates 

to produce results, including an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion framework built into OER materials in 20 

courses to serve 1,160 students served at a cost-per-participant of $1,724, saving students an estimated 

total of $2,214,400 in textbook costs by December of 2023 (first three years of project). Dissemination 

activities to reach 112 additional California community colleges, 87 rural national HSIs, 523 urban 

national HSIs, and 328 national emerging HSIs, will exponentially grow return on investment in 

subsequent years. The applicant has addressed the Competitive Preference Priority by integrating 

improved collaborative and disseminative structures that address gaps in OER and which promote 

degree completion for students at a reduced cost and shorter time to completion through the project 

narrative. The project also addresses the RFA’s Competitive Preference Priority, using technology-based 

strategies for personalized learning and continuous improvement through the development and hosting 

of OER material in online repositories, providing online instructor workshops, and developing and 

sharing LMS course shells available for download through a Creative Commons License. The applicant 

noted that each project partner is a federally recognized Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and Minority 

Serving Institution (MSI). The lead education agency, West Hills College Lemoore, is an HSI and MSI.
Middlesex County College (NJ) P116T200028, $1,444,068.00 (multi-year request), In consortium with 

17 New Jersey Community Colleges and one four-year college, propose to establish the Open Textbook 

Collaborative Project (OTC Project) that will directly involve 1,080 full-time and part-time faculty from 18 

institutions in designing and piloting open textbook courses, professional development and/or 

implementing open textbook courses; benefitting 34,000 students enrolled in STEM/CTE programs who 

will participate in the open textbook courses. The OTC Project will build local capacity to save students 

money on the cost of textbooks, improve student learning outcomes, and sustain activities beyond 

funding, through the following activities: 1) Create high quality OER course textbooks for 12 highly 

enrolled STEM/CTE gateway (introductory) courses, 2) Create communities of practice, conduct training 

and professional development to produce effective STEM/OER textbooks which meet industry standards 

of four CTE industry sectors and STEM learning outcomes to increase student success; 3) Expand 

sustainable professional development to support the expansion of open textbooks at 17 New Jersey 

community colleges and beyond; and 4) create the NJ Open repository and the first national Career and 

Technical Education (CTE) Course OER Collection to share STEM/CTE course OER and training instruction 

as a reproducible initiative throughout the U.S. By the end of the three-year project period, the project 

will save students $47,600,000 in the cost of textbooks. In addition, the three year course completion 

rate among targeted students enrolled in CTE programs of study will increase by 25 percentage points 

above the 2020 baseline data, and 15 community colleges nationwide outside of the consortium will 

have adopted the use of open textbooks produced through the grant. The Consortium is addressing the 

Competitive Preference Priority through the project’s use of a repository enabling online publishing that 

will allow faculty to create textbooks and other course materials directly in the platform. OER can be 

integrated into the LMS, and connect to ancillary homework and simulation applications, as well as 

formative assessment modules. The Consortium addresses the invitational priority, as Middlesex 

County College is a Minority-Serving Institution (MSI) and the Lead College. Passaic County Community 

College, a partner within the consortium, is additionally an MSI.
Louisiana Board of Regents (LA) P116T200031, $1,985,881.00 (multi-year request). LOUIS: The 

Louisiana Library Network, in consortium with Pressbooks, an Open Education Resources (OER)

educational technology entity proposes to establish the Interactive OER for Dual Enrollment program to 

support the extension of access to high quality post-secondary opportunities to high school students 

across Louisiana by engaging secondary and post-secondary instructors of dual enrollment across 

Louisiana in the curation and creation of OER for 25 of the state’s general education courses, offered as 

both dual and traditional enrollment options. This process will be collaboratively supported by Louisiana 

institution personnel, including librarians and instructional designers. In order to identify courses that 

would have a significant positive impact on the equity gap through the introduction of open textbooks 

and interactive and assessment content, 2019 academic year data was reviewed for all public postsecondary institutions in the state for courses listed in the Louisiana Master Course Articulation Matrix, 

a framework that reflects course equivalencies among these institutions. This data provided the number 

of students and their rates of achievement for each grade type, including D letter grade, failure, 

withdrawal (DFW). Selected courses had both high overall enrollment (annual enrollment of 2,000 

students or more) and DFW rates of 20% or more. When these courses were examined for dual 

enrollment, they also had the highest DFW rates for minority student categories based on enrollment. 

LOUIS will employ a team-based cooperative course development model. Selected participants will be 

designated to specific cohorts, structured around disciplinary areas, to focus on the dual enrollment 

courses that have received prioritization. These cohorts will be led by an academic librarian charged 

with coordinating team activity and acting as a technical advisor on copyright, OER repositories, and 

open education. All teams will be supported by LOUIS staff, coordinating training and professional 

development across cohort groups to build capacity. Institutions will receive remunerated contracts for 

participation. Using Pressbooks as the creation platform, and supported through training and local 

technical experts, instructors will construct comprehensive, interactive courses for use in both 

secondary dual enrollment and post-secondary academic settings. Courses will be peer reviewed with 

adherence to accessibility requirements. Finally, courses will be made publicly available. Subsequent 

adoption in the state will be supported by the Dual Enrollment Task Force, which was created via Act 

128 of the 2019 Regular Legislative Session. The program anticipates to produce results by eliminating 

textbook costs for the priority 25 dual enrollment courses, to remove a barrier to participation, ensure 

that OER master courses are developed to meet the needs of diverse learners and institutional contexts, 

secondary and postsecondary, and create a replicable model of interactive OER that can be adopted 

across institutions to reduce the time to build OER sections. With Pressbooks as an educational 

technology partner, the applicant has addressed the Competitive Preference Priority because the

Interactive OER for Dual Enrollment Program creates a framework for leveraging existing curated OER 

content and adding collaboratively developed interactive ancillaries. The applicant noted that several 

HBCU’s, and community colleges are members of the LOUIS consortium, and therefore address the 

invitational priority.
The University of Texas at Arlington (TX) P116T200033, $582,322.00 (multi-year request), in 

consortium with California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) and University of South Florida (USF),

proposes to establish OERTransport: Enabling Transportation Planning Professional Advancement. The 

applicant has identified the target population as students enrolled in the six graduate courses at the 

consortium universities that will implement the six proposed Transportation Planning open textbooks, 

which include the core curriculum of a postbaccalaureate certificate in Transportation Planning; a 

national in-demand occupation. The consortium partners, also members of a national university 

research center led by The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), will collaborate with their respective 

metropolitan stakeholders, transportation agencies, and employers, as well as with their open resource 

libraries and centers for teaching and learning, to accomplish the following project goals: 1) Eliminate 

textbook costs for select Transportation Planning courses at consortium institutions in Texas, California 

and Florida; 2) Expand OER education in Transportation Planning within and beyond consortium 

institutions. Project partners will attain these goals through the following objectives and activities: 1.1) 

Develop six industry-vetted transportation planning OER textbooks organized in plugNplay modules that 

support student personal learning; 1.2) Implement the OER textbooks in transportation planning 

courses and a postbaccalaureate certificate enhancing student success; 1.3) Build OER instructional 

capacity beyond the project; and 2.1) Scale the OER Transportation Planning model across U.S. 

transportation planning and urban planning programs. By the end of the grant period, the following 

outcomes will be obtained: 1) The total average textbook cost savings resulting from the project’s six 

OER textbooks implemented at the three institutions will be $650.81; 2) The total textbook cost for 

students, who enroll in the core courses of the Planning and Policy Certificate implementing the 

project’s OER text books, will be at least 77% less than for students in the same certificate program 

enrolled in non OER courses using commercial textbooks; 3) The average total tuition saving for students 

who gain marketable transportation planning skills by completing the Transportation Planning and 

Policy Certificate program rather than a complete master’s degree will be $18,646 for residents and 

$42,427 for non-residents; 4) At least 150 students per year will have enrolled in the graduate courses 

implementing the Transportation Planning OER textbooks designed under this grant; 5) At least 80% of 

students and instructors using the OER Transportation Planning textbooks developed under this grant 

will rate these OER materials as “very good”, “good” or “better” in terms of cost, accessibility, and 

instructional quality compared to previously used textbooks; 6) A discoverable collection of OER 

transportation planning textbooks, including those developed under the grant, will be curated and 

housed in the three participant’s OER libraries and shared with major OER repositories. The project’s 

OERTtransport textbooks will be downloaded at least 300 times by end of 2023 and at least 1,000 every 

year thereafter. The applicant is addressing the Competitive Preference Priority by taking advantage of 

the Mavs Open Press open textbook publishing software designed for accessibility in accordance with 

WCAG 2.0 A & AA guidelines and the H5P tool for designing OER interactive courseware for personalized 

student learning. The project’s OER textbooks will be disseminated under Creative Commons licensing 

and will be downloadable in printable formats. The applicant addresses the Invitational Priority as The 

University of Texas-Arlington, the lead institution, is currently designated as an eligible Hispanic-Serving 

Institution.