In spring 2016, CUNY’s Office of Library Services was selected to participate in Achieving the Dream’s OER Degree Initiative. Under this grant, BMCC, Hostos Community College, and Bronx Community College were three of 38 colleges nationwide converting at least one section in all of the courses in a selected degree from commercial course materials to open educational resources (OER). BMCC’s Criminal Justice OER degree was developed through this initiative.
Unlike other BMCC OER programs, which use both OER and other freely available, no-cost materials to achieve zero textbook cost (ZTC), the Achieving the Dream OER Degree Initiative requires that all course materials be true OER with Creative Commons licenses. This requirement ensures that other educators in the United States and around the globe will be able to adopt and adapt the courses our faculty create for the program, thus contributing to scalability and sustainability of OER degrees nationwide.
We are grateful for the commitment and substantial work and time invested by Criminal Justice faculty, as well as faculty across the departments, in creating BMCC’s first OER/ZTC degree.
