The free of charge technical assistance services will provide a competitive advantage for organizations seeking C3T grant funds and ensure that the open educational resources created with these federal funds are of the highest quality. The partnering organizations will provide the following areas of expertise: open licensing, learning and course design, professional development, and adoption and use. C3T applicants interested in these free services should include boilerplate language in their proposal. This suggested language, as well as a high-level description of services, can be viewed at
http://creativecommons.org/taa-grant-programCreative Commons is excited to participate in this groundbreaking effort and grateful to The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for its generous support in facilitating open learning.
*****
Updated April 13, 2011
Creative Commons is pleased to announce we have been awarded a grant from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to provide support to successful applicants of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (C3T) grant program with our partnering organizations Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative (OLI), CAST, and the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC).
Applicants interested in partnering with Creative Commons for this support should incorporate the following paragraph into their C3T proposal:
Aligned with Section III D of the SGA “Leveraged Expertise,” [enter applicant name] will partner with Creative Commons, Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative, CAST, and the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. These highly experienced organizations will provide comprehensive infrastructure support and capacity building along the following dimensions:
- Creative Commons is the global leader in open content licensing and will provide technical support in meeting the open licensing requirement and ensuring interoperability of C3T funded content.
- Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative brings expertise in applying results from the learning sciences to the design, implementation, evaluation and continuous improvement of open web-based learning environments.
- CAST is a pioneer in the field of Universal Design for Learning and will offer grantees technical support and enabling technologies to ensure that all of the digital content and learning environments developed in this project succeed with the widest range of learners possible.
- The Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges is one of the leading community college systems in the nation fully embracing open educational resources and open licensing, and will develop best practices in adoption and use, policies and professional development that work for participating institutions.
Services will be coordinated through Creative Commons.
Good luck with your applications! Creative Commons will contact all successful grantees after the first round winners are announced. More in-depth detail on services will be provided after the DOL announcement. Questions should be directed to
TAA@creativecommons.org
————————
High-level description of services
The partnering organizations will provide C3T grantees a comprehensive set of support and technical assistance to ensure their success. Those services include reinforcing open licensing practices, increasing access to existing open educational resources (OER), Universal Design for Learning (UDL), accessibility and web-based design best practices, as well as professional development in critical policy and adoption practices. Every effort will be made not only to link grantees with existing resources, but also to encourage linkages among them to maximize benefits and build open licensing capacity in the community college space
Open Licensing Support: Creative Commons will lend technical support in meeting the open licensing requirement and ensuring interoperability of content. Creative Commons will explain its licenses and tools (especially CC BY) to grantees, and provide both explanatory documentation and outreach to help institutions understand and effectively implement this requirement.
Course Design and Best Practices: OLI and CAST will provide expertise and enabling technologies to ensure that all of the digital content and learning environments developed in this project are designed to succeed with the widest range of learners possible.
Web-Based Learning Environments: Plus Platform and Plus Co-Development: OLI and CAST will offer two additional options for deeper involvement in building web-based interactive environments. Institutions selected to participate in the “Plus Platform” option will have access to OLI’s web-based learning platform to host their own open educational resources. A group of multiple subgroups will be selected for “Plus Co-development” support and engage in a full design process for OER resulting in 3-4 complete learning environments created and hosted on the UDL-enhanced OLI web-based learning platform.
Making the Case: Policy and Best Practices: SBCTC will utilize its system-wide experience in adoption, re-mix, re-use and distribution of OER to help grantee institutions develop best practices and policies that take full advantage of the C3T grants and process. SBCTC will help grantees understand the direct connections between OER adoption and performance-based funding. SBCTC will develop and provide professional development on adoption and re-use of C3T open content for faculty, deans, provosts, presidents and trustees.
