Kaleidoscope Project: Improving Student Success through Collaborative Open Courses

The NGLC-funded Kaleidoscope Project brings together eight colleges that serve predominantly at-risk students to create and improve general education courses using open educational resources. The project partners propose to improve student success by eliminating textbook costs as an obstacle to access for low-income students. More importantly, the use of OER allows faculty member teams to continually improve Kaleidoscope course designs and materials based on student learning results to positively impact student success. This session will briefly overview the benefits of collaborative course design and obstacles encountered to date, as well as the use of OER and measurement of learning results. Participants will also learn about a practical model for applying OER to improve student success, explore approaches to bringing OER into existing curriculum, and identify obstacles that faculty members encounter in adopting OER as well as potential solutions.