Bill Strips DOL Grants of OER Provisions

Image via WikipediaGot a note this morning from Cable Green via Kim Thanos. Kim says that if the Kaleidoscope grant was funded under these restrictions, we could not have proceeded with the course developments. The bill to be discussed appears to remove any support for OERs (open education resources).

DOL’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) will be hosting two web-chat sessions for the public to provide feedback on the first round of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program competition. This is the program that just announced the first investment of $500 million in community colleges with the OER requirement on new course/content development. The program is slated to invest $2 billion in total.

It is important that those in support of federal open investments participate in this event. Whether and how any further open investments are made in this program will be determined, in part, through public comment sessions such as these.

ETA invites interested individuals to participate in either of the TAACCCT Grant Program public comment sessions, scheduled for:

• Tuesday, October 4, 2011 3:00-4:00pm EDT
• Thursday, October 6, 2011 3:00-4:00pm EDT

To join the public comment session, please use the following link to access the session you are attending: http://www.dol.gov/dol/chat.htm. Note that this link is for both sessions.

A transcript of the listening sessions will be available to the public at www.doleta.gov/TAACCCT after October 12, 2011

The TAACCCT program is designed to meet industry needs while accelerating individual learning and improving college retention and achievement rates. The overall goal is to increase industry-recognized credential or degree completion rates of participants. Projects were encouraged to use online or technology-enabled learning to achieve these objectives. DOL is implementing the TAACCCT program in partnership with the Department of Education.

For more information about the TAACCCT program, as well as a list of grantees awarded under the first round of grants, visit: www.doleta.gov/TAACCCT

Please attend both sessions. We need all voices on the table.

Thank you,
Cable

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The House Appropriations Committee just released the draft fiscal year 2012 Labor, Health and Human Services (LHHS) funding bill. The legislation includes funding for programs within the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and other related agencies. Included in this bill is the following provision, which would appear to strip the ability of the DOL to support any further OER investments:


"SEC. 124. None of the funds made available by this Act for the Department of Labor may be used to develop new courses, modules, learning materials, or projects in carrying out education or career job training grant programs unless the Secretary of Labor certifies, after a comprehensive market-based analysis, that such courses, modules, learning materials, or projects are not otherwise available for purchase or licensing in the marketplace or under development for students who require them to participate in such education or career job training grant programs."

The text of the bill and accompanying announcement can be found online at:

http://appropriations.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=262231

The language can be found on page 37 of the bill.

There are several steps that Congress would have to take before this language would be approved, but first it has to move through the subcommittee and full committee. A subcommittee markup has not yet been scheduled.

Current subcommittee members include:

Republicans
• Denny Rehberg, Montana, Subcommittee Chair
• Jerry Lewis, California
• Rodney Alexander, Louisiana
• Jack Kingston, Georgia
• Kay Granger, Texas
• Michael K. Simpson, Idaho
• Jeff Flake, Arizona
• Cynthia M. Lummis, Wyoming


Democrats
• Rosa L. DeLauro, Connecticut
• Nita M. Lowey, New York
• Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., Illinois
• Lucille Roybal-Allard, California
• Barbara Lee, California

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Cable Green, PhD
Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons
(e) cable@creativecommons.org / (m) +01 360-790-3114 / (s) cable.green
(t) @cgreen / (b) OER
(b) power of open