By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
At last week’s Barton Community College Board of Trustees meeting, Foundation
Director Lindsey Bogner shared a success story of the college’s Open Education
Resources (OER) program. OER classes provide students with no-cost or low-cost
course materials. Bogner praised the initiative for allowing two Larned
Correctional Mental Health Facility residents to complete their degrees once
released from Larned.
Barton Vice President of Instruction Elaine Simmons said getting instructors to
retool their courses to cut expenses for students does not happen overnight.
"It's a lot of work to redesign your course and look for those resources," said Simmons. "It's an incredible benefit for the students, in terms of costs. It's also an incredible benefit to students because their faculty are taking a fresh look at the course they're teaching and ensuring that the learning outcomes, the delivery and interaction are occurring."
Since starting the OER initiative in 2019, Barton hit a milestone this semester
by saving students more than $500,000 with no-cost or low-cost materials.
Barton’s Director of Innovation and Compliance Lee Miller noted that savings
figure is probably closer to $580,000.
"With that $500,000 marker, we did it on basis that is a very conservative number," said Miller. "We did it based on a $100 saved per student per textbook or resource per course. We definitely have saved students much more than that. We try to note it that we can back up exactly what we say, and how we can say it with evidence."
Low-cost classes mean $50 or less for course material costs.