Pasadena City College
Serving PCC
Since 1915
R I E
ONLINE EXCLUSIVES AT PCCCOURIER.COM
HAPPY
RECORD
STORE
Э
DAY £
JO YOU!
MUSIC WE UKI
.CONTEST
AVtlOlC
Eric Haynes/Courier
A poster decorated with beads and a message to the customers is set up under the stairs for Record Store Day (RSD) at Amoe¬
ba music store on Saturday.
Rockin' Record Store Day Pgs. 6 & 7
Free textbooks coming soon
Kristen Luna
Editor-in-Chief
The Academic Senate is expect¬
ed to adopt a resolution in its next
meeting that would make PCC
eligible for an Open Educational
Resource (OER) grant that could
replace price)1' textbooks with free
online resources for students in
some courses.
According to PCC Online, “the
OER includes teaching, learning
and research resources that reside in
the public domain or have been re¬
leased under an intellectual property
license that permits their free use
and repurposing by others.”
With this grant, textbooks would
not be mandatory for students, who
would instead have free access to
the online materials including “full
courses, course materials, modules,
textbooks, videos, tests, software
and any other tools, materials, or
techniques used to support open
access to knowledge.”
The decision on whether to
implement OERs in the classroom
will be left to the discretion of the
professors to choose the resourc¬
es that would most benefit their
students. Instructors will be allowed
to alter materials to best meet the
needs of their students by using the
most up-to-date technology and
multimedia content.
When an instructor chooses to
implement OERs they must assess
the resources to ensure the tech¬
nology is accessible for people with
disabilities.
According to assistant profes¬
sor of social sciences and Faculty
Accreditation Coordinator Lynora
Rogacs, the grant from the state of
California would allow faculty' to be
trained on how to make the shift to
open educational resources. Training
will be offered over the summer
in the hopes of going live with the
process in the fall. And as of now
there are roughly 50 different course
sections that will be adopting OERs.
AB 798 is the College Textbook
Affordability Act of 2015 and
would create the OER Adoption
Incentive Fund (AIF), which would
help finance and accelerate the
adoption of OERs on campus.
“The grant process requires a
resolution from the Senate (which
was approved on
4/11)
and a broad
Professional Development plan,
which also has to be approved by
Senate,” Academic Senate President
Valerie Foster said in an email to
faculty.
If approved by the Senate, the
campus would be eligible for an
initial AIF grant. Then each year the
campus will receive an AIF grant for
meeting established performance
standards.
Susan Bower, chair of the faculty
development committee, presented
at the EOR forum on Tuesday to
the campus community.
One of the downsides is that not
all courses have an environment
or course conducive to OERs, and
even courses that could benefit
from OERs may not have sufficient
or satisfactory online materials
available.
At the accreditation forum held
last Friday, Rogacs and Scott spoke
on OERs including what they
anticipate for the future, and stated
that PCC estimates the grant to be
around $50,000.
“I’m shifting to OER in the fall
so I need about a year to figure
out what’s working and what’s not
before I can feel comfortable adver¬
tising it to students,” Rogacs said.
There are already instructors im¬
plementing OERs in their courses
including social sciences, psychol¬
ogy, sociology, political science,
critical thinking, and math.
“We’re trying to hit the areas that
are most in need based on high de¬
mand courses. We can start offering
them there and then trickle down
from there,” Rogacs said. “But like
I said, that’s a lofty goal that is way
down in the future. We’re really hap¬
py just to get this ball rolling.”
“The idea is five years down ... if
you have a BOG waiver, you can ba¬
sically take that class without having
EBOOKS PAGE 2
Illustration by Katja Liebing
APRIL 21, 2016
VOLUME 113
ISSUE 07
Accreditation
update leads
to positive
outlook
John Orona
Managing Editor
Last week the school’s accredi¬
tation work group held a forum to
update the campus on the school’s
progress in completing the nine rec¬
ommendations given to PCC by the
Accrediting Commission for Com¬
munity and Junior Colleges (ACCJC)
last year. If the school does not
comply with these recommendation
by the time the team submits their
follow-up report in September it
faces losing its accreditation.
The most drastic and on-going
change the school faces comes
from a recommendation the college
was given over six years ago in its
previous accreditation visit: to tie
its budget to program review and to
improve of its planning processes
overall.
To accomplish this, the school
has designed the Annual Update,
a yearly program review, and the
Integrated Planning Model (IPM),
a process for budget development
that incorporates the Annual Update
and shared governance review.
Both processes will be reviewed
and revised yearly, and after one
cycle within this new structure the
college has already begun gathering
ACCREDITATION PAGE 2
Senate
re-elects
executive
committee
John Orona
Managing Editor
The faculty reaffirmed its support
for the current Academic Sen¬
ate leadership as it re-elected the
incumbent slate in a decisive victory
against their challengers, a slate
which included former two-time
senate president Eduardo Cairo,
who has campaigned for the senate
presidency each of the last four
years.
The final vote tally released to
faculty last Thursday showed all
winning slate members received
at least 59 percent support of the
voting faculty. The same slate won
the presidency by only four votes in
last year’s election.
Faculty voted last week to retain
the senate executive committee of
President Valerie Foster, natural
sciences; Vice President Shelagh
Rose, languages and ESL; Secretary
Stephanie Fleming, performing arts;
and Treasurer Jay Cho, math and
computer science.
“[W]e believe we have made
significant progress in helping PCC
SENATE PAGE 2