Open Educational Resources

Civitas Adds OER Search to Course Schedule Planner

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 11/07/18

A new open educational resources (OER) search tool has been directly integrated into Civitas Learning's academic planning platform, letting students know if OER materials are available as they build their course schedules.

Civitas' College Scheduler enables students to pull their courses from a current degree plan and block non-class times to generate all possible schedules. Then they can customize and visually review the results to set up the optimal schedule and minimize the number of "filler" classes they need to take. The new OER search technology was recently added to the Scheduler.

Both the California State University system and Grand Rapids Community College in Michigan have piloted the search tech. College Scheduler was created by a CSU-Chico alumnus and runs in nearly every CSU campus. CSU also runs MERLOT, a major project to make OER materials available to its faculty.

"As faculty incorporate the use of OER in their classes, students need easy-to-use technology to help them quickly identify course schedules and degree plans that are most affordable," said Lisa Petrides, founder and head of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education and a member of the Civitas Learning National Advisory Board, in a statement. "Civitas Learning's College Scheduler is consistent with ISKME's efforts to make OER more discoverable. The tool will now empower students to make their own decisions about OER as a cost-saving mechanism."