Name: For the Benefit of All: Rethinking OER Access Through Discoverability and Student Navigation
Start: 2026-10-08T16:20:00-0400
End: 2026-10-08T16:50:00-0400

All sessions are available online except round tables, special activities, and workshops.

For the Benefit of All: Rethinking OER Access Through Discoverability and Student Navigation

Thursday October 8, 2026 4:20pm - 4:50pm EDT

5 DR3

ID: 33697

Open Educational Resources (OER) and Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) pathways are often presented as equity-minded solutions for reducing financial barriers in higher education. Across California Community Colleges, substantial institutional effort has gone into course conversion, pathway mapping, funding, and reporting. Yet an important practical question remains: even when OER or ZTC options exist, can students actually find them, understand them, and intentionally choose them within the systems they use to plan and register for classes? This session examines that gap between institutional availability and student-facing usability.Drawing on findings from a mixed-methods ZTC Degree Feasibility Study involving 19 participating California community colleges, this presentation shares findings from an exploratory convergent design that integrates three sources of evidence: a multi-institutional student survey on awareness, preferences, and decision-making; student focus groups on navigation strategies and barriers; and semi-structured interviews with counselors, faculty, IT professionals, and administrators on operational feasibility. Together, these sources allow us to compare what institutions say is available with what students are realistically able to perceive and navigate.Across the data, several patterns emerged. Many students do not recognize the terms “OER” or “ZTC,” even when they are enrolled in courses that meet those definitions. Students consistently express interest in lower-cost and no-cost options, but cost is only actionable when it is visible, trustworthy, and easy to interpret at the moment of decision-making. Students also report confusion when labels are unclear or inconsistent, and some describe enrolling in courses marked ZTC or OER that still required payment for course materials. These findings suggest that access is not only a question of whether open options exist, but whether those options are embedded in student-facing systems in ways that support confidence, choice, and follow-through.This session introduces the concept of ambient discoverability: the idea that students should be able to identify and pursue OER and ZTC options without needing prior insider knowledge or familiarity with specialized terminology. Framed this way, OER access becomes not just a content issue, but a system design issue involving registration interfaces, degree planning tools, advising workflows, scheduling practices, and reliable backend data. Participants will leave with a practical framework for evaluating discoverability in their own settings and with concrete strategies for improving student-centered implementation. By reframing access through discoverability, navigation, and trust, this session speaks directly to the conference theme of protecting knowledge as a public good and ensuring that open education functions in practice, not only in principle. Open education is not fully open if only students with insider knowledge can find their way to it.

Speakers

Cheryl Bailey

Instruction & Systems Librarian, Irvine Valley College

Cheryl Bailey, MLIS, MA, is an Instruction and Systems Librarian whose work centers on equitable access to higher education, particularly for neurodiverse students. She earned her MLIS from San José State University and her MA from California State University, Long Beach, and is... Read More →

Rachel Fleming

OER & Equity Librarian, Irvine Valley College

Rachel Fleming, MLIS, is the OER and Equity Librarian at Irvine Valley College. She earned her MLIS from San José State University and is currently completing her first year in the CSU Channel Islands Doctorate in Educational Leadership for Equity and Justice (DELEJ) program. Over... Read More →

Thursday October 8, 2026 4:20pm - 4:50pm EDT
5 DR3 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Hacking the Open Ecosystem and Praxis for the Public Good

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OEGlobal 2026

Cheryl Bailey

Rachel Fleming

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OEGlobal 2026

Cheryl Bailey

Rachel Fleming

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