Special Episode: Collaborating with Community Colleges

2026-01-15

Download

MIT OpenCourseWare has been one of the pioneers of open education, leading the way by offering free materials from MIT courses as early as 2001, when no other institutions were pursuing comparably ambitious initiatives. But in subsequent years, there’s been an explosion of activity in open education, led by faculty members, instructional designers, and librarians at institutions throughout the United States and worldwide. In this episode, we hear from senior manager of MIT Open Education collaborations, Dr. Shira Segal, who talks about MIT’s efforts to team up with and learn from open education practitioners at the Maricopa County Community College District in Arizona, whose energetic promotion of open educational resources has saved students over $270 million in textbook costs, and College of the Canyons in California, a leader in the Zero Textbook Cost movement. We also hear excerpts from interviews with four instructors from those colleges, who talk about the potential benefits and unexpected challenges of using open educational resources in general, and about what they learned from their experiences in adapting OCW materials for use in their own classes.

Relevant Resources:

MIT OpenCourseWare

The OCW Educator Portal

More on MIT OpenCourseWare’s collaboration with community colleges

Maricopa County Community College District

College of the Canyons

Maricopa Community Colleges Save Students $270M in Textbooks

OER and Zero Textbook Cost at College of the Canyons

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Connect with Us

If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you!

Call us @ 617-715-2517