About

What is it?
The Open Course Library (OCL) is a collection of shareable course materials, including syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments designed by teams of college faculty, instructional designers, librarians, and other experts. Some of our materials (also called open educational resources, or OER) are paired with low cost textbooks ($30 or less). Many of the courses can be taught at no cost to students. Unless otherwise noted, all materials are shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY) license.OCL courses and materials have undergone testing for accessibility and have been designed using the industry-standard Quality Matters (QM) rubric for assessing the quality of online courses.

Our goals:
1.Lower textbook costs for students
2.Provide high quality, open resources for faculty

It is important to remember:
Washington community and technical colleges’ Open Course Library simply offers collections of course materials that cost $30 or less for our 81 highest enrolled courses. OCL leverages open educational resources (OER) that can be used, adapted and shared for free as well as low-cost publisher materials.

The Open Course Library is not about replacing faculty’s current teaching practice or course materials. The sole intention is to provide high quality materials that have the potential to lower instructional costs for students.

Faculty members do not need to use entire OCL courses — or even to use the materials as developed for the courses. Faculty might choose the same open or low-cost textbook that the OCL faculty chose, they might use OCL videos that are freely available on YouTube, they might take a course module or document, revise it, and put it in their own online course, or they might suggest that students use an app built with OCL content. They might build a course around current library or web resources.

Is it designed to replace face-to-face instruction?
No, Open Course Library materials are not all specific to online learning. OCL materials can easily be adapted for your online, hybrid, or f2f courses.

I already have a great course! Do I have to adopt the whole course?
No, you do not have to adopt the entire course. You can navigate through the course contents and simply take what you need; you are free to modify those parts and use them as you like.

Who owns the courses?
These course materials were created through an optional Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges (SBCTC) grant, and the SBCTC Open Licensing Policy requires that all materials created through optional grants carry an open license. Unless otherwise noted, the Open Course Library materials are owned by SBCTC and are freely shared to the world with a Creative Commons Attribution-only license (CC-BY)

How do faculty use the course contents?
Everything developed for the Open Course Library is free, digital, and shareable (unless otherwise noted). We invite faculty everywhere to explore, copy, customize, translate and adopt any and all course materials.

We do ask that you give us credit somewhere in your course – attribution is the heart of the CC-BY license utilized by OCL. Here’s an example: “[Portions of] or [This] course adapted from the Open Course Library of the Washington State Colleges. More information at http://opencourselibrary.org.”  SBCTC encourages and supports the use of the CC-BY to openly-license your own course materials and share them with others. SBCTC offers How to Use Open Educational Resources, an online course in finding, using and creating OER to support your own course-building projects.

Are there any costs?
Some courses currently require the purchase of a low-cost textbook. If an OCL course requires the purchase of a textbook or other resource, the cost may not exceed $30 per student. All other materials are free and there is no cost to adopt the course.

How can I contribute to the Open Course Library?
Though the OCL project is itself completed, there are many options for contributing to the OER community either by using OCL or using and contributing to the growing number of OER collections available. Adopt OCL materials, spread the word about OER and share your own course materials online with a Creative Commons open license.

If you have specific suggestions or comments regarding OCL, please contact us at bchae@sbctc.edu.