Introduction to "The Liberated"

"The Librerated" are students who have taken classes that use Open Education Resources (OER) instead of materials that follow a traditional textbook publishing model. OER are materials that are available for faculty members to adapt, revise, remix, and distribute to students for little or no cost. In fall 2012 Tacoma Community College (TCC) decided that we could save students a collective $250,000 on textbooks. We called our campaign "Liberate$250K."

At most recent estimate (Winter 2014) almost six thousand students at TCC have taken courses where teachers have adopted OER. That is a collective savings of $635,000. As the OER Project Director at TCC I believe that our efforts to lower student costs by focusing on textbooks as a controllable cost has improved students' lives. I hope that this blog will help us to share some students' perspectives on how our project has improved their access to education.

I give you "The Liberated."