SLCC math department
Salt Lake Community College’s mathematics department won the
Digital Learning Innovation award from the Online Learning Consortium,
presented Nov. 13 during the annual OLC Accelerate Conference in Orlando,
Florida.
The award, which includes $100,000, recognizes efforts by
SLCC’s math department and the college’s Faculty Development and Educational
Initiatives office to incorporate free online educational resources (OER) into
the school’s math curriculum. OER materials are online learning resources that can
be legally and freely downloaded, edited and shared. SLCC’s OER initiative is
dubbed OPEN SLCC.
The mathematics department combined OER materials with
lesson plans and tutorials provided by Lumen Learning to revise its educational
pathways. Math pathways is a learning system designed to help students match
their degree goals while significantly increasing their quantitative literacy
achievement rates.
“With the integration of OER into our learning management
system, students have immediate access to learning materials from the first day
of class,” said mathematics department Associate Dean Suzanne Mozdy.
The math department leads SLCC’s OER efforts with nearly
1,400 lesson sections that use free online resources through OPEN SLCC.
Collegewide, about 92,000 SLCC students have saved nearly $8 million using OPEN
SLCC since fall 2014.
“SLCC is proud to be viewed as a national leader in the OER
arena,” said Jason Pickavance, director of SLCC’s Faculty Development and
Educational Initiatives office. “Our aim is to always promote inclusive and
equitable access to learning materials, helping make college more affordable
and accessible to all.”
