Virginia
is for open educational resources, or at least state legislators there think
so.
The
governor recently signed into law an amendment directing all public colleges
and universities to develop guidelines for adopting and using open educational
resources (OER) for their courses. The measure allows institutions to include
low-cost commercially published materials in the guidelines, along with free
and open materials.
While
other states, such as Florida, have passed bills calling on their public
institutions to take concrete steps toward reducing the cost of course
materials for students, Virginia’s new law is apparently the first to emphasize
OER to this degree. Virginia law already requires faculty to be aware of the
retail prices of the course materials they choose and encourages them to select
used editions when feasible.
Some
university systems and individual institutions have set up programs to provide
grants to professors for the creation of OER. The Virginia bill doesn’t include
any funding for resource development, leaving it up to the schools to figure
out how to motivate faculty.
The
state’s Department of Planning and Budget, in its impact statement on the law,
acknowledged, “It is unknown how many faculty members of Virginia’s public
institutions of higher education would embrace the use of open educational
resources and low-cost commercially published materials in their courses.”
The law
takes effect July 1.