{"id":15856,"date":"2019-03-04T22:44:06","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T06:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/?p=15856"},"modified":"2025-12-09T10:59:05","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T18:59:05","slug":"odessa-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/odessa-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Odessa College Fuels Student Success with OER Courseware"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"fusion-fullwidth fullwidth-box fusion-builder-row-1 fusion-flex-container nonhundred-percent-fullwidth non-hundred-percent-height-scrolling\" style=\"background-color: #ffffff;background-position: center center;background-repeat: no-repeat;border-width: 0px 0px 0px 0px;border-color:#eae9e9;border-style:solid;\" ><div class=\"fusion-builder-row fusion-row fusion-flex-align-items-flex-start\" style=\"max-width:104%;margin-left: calc(-4% \/ 2 );margin-right: calc(-4% \/ 2 );\"><div class=\"fusion-layout-column fusion_builder_column fusion-builder-column-0 fusion_builder_column_1_1 1_1 fusion-flex-column\"><div class=\"fusion-column-wrapper fusion-flex-justify-content-flex-start fusion-content-layout-column\" style=\"background-position:left top;background-repeat:no-repeat;-webkit-background-size:cover;-moz-background-size:cover;-o-background-size:cover;background-size:cover;padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px;\"><div class=\"fusion-text fusion-text-1\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/OdessaCollegelogo.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-14083 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/OdessaCollegelogo.png\" alt=\"Logo for Odessa College, in two-tone blue font\" width=\"321\" height=\"76\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/OdessaCollegelogo-200x47.png 200w, https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/OdessaCollegelogo-300x71.png 300w, https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/OdessaCollegelogo-400x95.png 400w, https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/OdessaCollegelogo-600x142.png 600w, https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/OdessaCollegelogo.png 642w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 321px) 100vw, 321px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Open education<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">al\u00a0<\/span>resources (OER) play a central role in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.odessa.edu\/\">Odessa College<\/a>\u2019s relentless efforts to remove obstacles to student success. Partnering with <a href=\"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/\">Lumen Learning<\/a> to provide state-of-the-art OER courseware designed to strengthen learning for at-risk students, Odessa College is achieving outstanding results:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over $1 million per semester in textbook cost savings<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over 20,000 enrollments in OER courses since 2017<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Emporium-style Math Studio using OER courseware to transform preparedness for college level math <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All sections of core associate degree courses converted to OER<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Located in rural West Texas, Odessa College is a Hispanic-serving institution in communities with historically low college attendance, many first-<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">generation college students, and significant socioeconomic disadvantage. The College\u2019s faculty and staff have gone to great lengths to identify and address common problems their students face, with an array of inventive student success initiatives.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Odessa_Quote.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-15859\" src=\"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Odessa_Quote.png\" alt=\"Quote From Becky Musil, Dean of Teaching and Learning saying &quot;Using Lumen's OER courseware, our students have access to excellent OER content as well as online homework, immediate feedback, personalized nudges, and other tools to support them with the best learning possible.&quot;\" width=\"375\" height=\"278\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Odessa_Quote-200x148.png 200w, https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Odessa_Quote-300x222.png 300w, https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Odessa_Quote-400x297.png 400w, https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Odessa_Quote.png 584w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 375px) 100vw, 375px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Faculty teams have led course redesign initiatives to transition high-enrollment courses to open educational resources (OER). These projects have improved affordability and access to learning content, and they have given Odessa College faculty greater control over how to shape the learning experience to fit their students\u2019 needs. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cOur goal with OER course materials is to provide successful degree pathways for students who wouldn\u2019t otherwise be able to attend college,\u201d said Becky Musil, Dean of Teaching &amp; Learning at Odessa College. \u201cTextbook affordability is a huge piece of this picture, and so is the learning experience. Using Lumen\u2019s OER courseware, our students have access to excellent OER content as well as online homework, immediate feedback, personalized nudges, and other tools to support them with the best learning possible.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In addition to faculty-led OER course redesign projects, Odessa College has implemented <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.odessa.edu\/RoadtoAspen\/Resources\/AspenPDF\/Odessa-College-Collateral-WEB.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">other inventive student success initiatives<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, such as eight week terms, FAFSA workshops, Success Coaches, a Drop Rate Improvement Program to increase students\u2019 connection to their courses, and first-class free for all students. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These student-focused interventions won Odessa College a coveted Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence Rising Star Award in 2017, and it has been named as an Aspen prize finalist in 2019. Since embarking on this path, Odessa College has seen:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Higher enrollment<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Near doubling of three-year graduation rate<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lower drop rates<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Improved persistence<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Improved success rates, particularly among students of color<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 600;\">More about Odessa\u2019s student success initiatives:<\/span><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Read\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.odessa.edu\/RoadtoAspen\/Resources\/AspenPDF\/Odessa-College-Collateral-WEB.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Odessa College&#8217;s Whitepaper for the 2019 Aspen Prize submission<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Odessa-College_Success-Story.pdf\">Download a printable PDF<\/a> of this Odessa College success story<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 600;\">Learn more about Lumen:<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lumen Learning provides affordable course materials designed using open educational resources (OER), with a catalog focusing on high-enrollment general education courses. Our goal is to provide OER that are better for learning and simple for faculty members to adopt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Discover OER course materials that are a great fit for you and your students: visit our <a href=\"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/courses\/\">public catalog<\/a> or download our <a href=\"https:\/\/info.lumenlearning.com\/download-course-list\">course list.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><style type=\"text\/css\">.fusion-body .fusion-builder-column-0{width:100% !important;margin-top : 0px;margin-bottom : 0px;}.fusion-builder-column-0 > .fusion-column-wrapper {padding-top : 0px !important;padding-right : 0px !important;margin-right : 1.92%;padding-bottom : 0px !important;padding-left : 0px !important;margin-left : 1.92%;}@media only screen and (max-width:1024px) {.fusion-body .fusion-builder-column-0{width:100% !important;}.fusion-builder-column-0 > .fusion-column-wrapper {margin-right : 1.92%;margin-left : 1.92%;}}@media only screen and (max-width:640px) {.fusion-body .fusion-builder-column-0{width:100% !important;}.fusion-builder-column-0 > .fusion-column-wrapper {margin-right : 1.92%;margin-left : 1.92%;}}<\/style><\/div><\/div><style type=\"text\/css\">.fusion-body .fusion-flex-container.fusion-builder-row-1{ padding-top : 0px;margin-top : 0px;padding-right : 30px;padding-bottom : 0px;margin-bottom : 0px;padding-left : 30px;}<\/style><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":15858,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,85,86,1],"tags":[525,64,527,56,129,526,126,155],"class_list":["post-15856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-in-the-news","category-success-stories","category-uncategorized","tag-odessa-college","tag-oer","tag-ohm","tag-open-educational-resources","tag-student-success","tag-texas","tag-textbook-cost-savings","tag-waymaker"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15856"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20559,"href":"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15856\/revisions\/20559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumenlearning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}