BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 798
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Date of Hearing: May 6, 2015
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Jimmy Gomez, Chair
AB
798 (Bonilla) - As Amended April 6, 2015
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Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: NoReimbursable: No
SUMMARY:
This bill establishes, until July 1, 2020, a state grant program
to incentivize increased adoption of open source educational
resources at campuses of the California Community Colleges
(CCC), the California State University (CSU), and the University
AB 798
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of California (UC). Specifically, this bill:
1)Establishes the Open Educational Resources Adoption Incentive
Fund to provide incentives and rewards for campus and faculty
efforts to accelerate use of open educational resources in
order to reduce students' cost and improve access to such
materials.
2)Stipulates that moneys in the fund are to support faculty
professional development, open educational resource curation
activities, and technology support for faculty.
3)Authorizes campuses, upon adoption of a local resolution, to
submit the resolution to their respective campus governing
board for an initial grant to establish a strategy, as
specified, for meeting the above goals. The strategy is to
include three campus-determined benchmarks for each of the
following three years.
4)Requires the respective segment offices to review, approve,
and administer the grants.
5)Stipulates that after receiving the initial grant, the
campuses shall receive bonus grants in each of the following
three years if they meet the corresponding benchmarks for
those years. The maximum amounts of the initial grant and
bonus grants are unspecified.
6)Stipulates that the bonus grants are to be administered
locally by the academic senate. in collaboration with the
campus president, provost, or chief academic officer and the
campus student body organization.
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7)Requires the Chancellors of the CCC and the CSU and the UC
President to report annually whether the grants are increasing
the rate of adoption of open source educational resources and
decreasing students' textbook costs.
FISCAL EFFECT:
At least several million dollars would be needed for a viable,
multi-year grant program available to the over 150 campuses in
three systems. Moreover, depending on the number of campuses in
each segment seeking grants, each of the systemwide offices
would need a half- or full-time position, at $70,000 to $140,000
(General Fund) annually to establish and oversee the grant
program. To the extent the program makes more OER resources
available to more students, significant savings in textbook
costs could accrue to students.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose. According to the author, in order to reduce costs for
students and increase the rate of adoption of OER, faculty
need support on their local campus to help learn about new
technology available and to find the time to update their
courses in order to use OER. The author states, "AB 798
provides the funding and incentive necessary to support
professors when they choose to adopt OER. The College
Textbook Affordability Act recognizes that this support will
be different for every local campus depending on existing
programs, makeup of student body and number of professors.
Each local campus can create a plan that will specifically
address the hurdles to OER on their local campus."
2)Background. According to the College Board, the average
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undergraduate student should budget between $1,200 and $1,300
for textbooks and supplies each year-roughly equivalent to
annual CCC fees for a full-time student and 25% of tuition
costs at CSU. A 2014 study by Public Interest Research Groups
(Student PIRGs) found that 65% of students skipped buying or
renting a textbook because it was too expensive, and 94% of
those students felt that in so doing, there grade would suffer
in a course. Additionally, almost half of the students said
the cost of textbooks impacted how many course they were able
to take.
OER are educational materials such as textbooks, research
articles, videos, assessments, or simulations that are either
licensed under an open copyright license or are in the public
domain. OERs provide no-cost access and no-cost permission to
revise, reuse, remix, or redistribute the materials. According
to a 2012 policy brief by the Center for American Progress and
EDUCAUSE, digital OERs enable faculty to customize learning
materials to suit their course objectives and can provide
students with a more flexible set of tools that can contribute
to a richer learning experience.
3)Prior Legislation. SB 1052 (Steinberg)/Chapter 621, Statutes
of 2012, established the California Open Education Resources
Council, composed of three faculty members each from UC, CSU,
and the CCC, to develop a list of 50 lower division courses
across the three segments for which high-quality, affordable
digital open source textbooks and related material shall be
developed or acquired, to create and administer a review and
approval process for open source materials, and to establish a
competitive request-for-proposal process in which faculty
members, publishers, and other interested parties would apply
for funds to produce 50 high-quality, affordable, digital open
source textbooks and related materials. An appropriation of $5
million was provided for this effort, to be matched by
nonstate funds. To date, only about $1 million has been
matched.
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In its most recent progress report, the Council reports that
it has thus far selected the 50 courses, identified more than
150 appropriate OERs for this courses, developed a
standardized peer review and approval process, and recruited
faculty to conduct the reviews. As of March 2015, the Council
reports that reviews are completed for 10 courses, involving
34 OER textbooks. The review process is being coordinated for
40 additional courses and 120 additional reviews.
Analysis Prepared by:Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916)
319-2081